Contemplative riches of 14th-century Roman world history

For the Sunday of St. Gregory Palamas, some thoughts and a timeline

Holy Transfiguration, detail of an icon by Theophanes the Greek, late 14th c.

I confess, a more honest title of this article might be, “Guided tour of the rabbit hole I fell into.” But the impetus that started it was a good one, and I believe the results can be redeemed.

I started with the legitimate question of what was going on historically at the time of the hesychast controversy, which takes place in the Eastern Roman Empire from the mid-1330s up to the 1351 council in Constantinople that at last concludes the affair in favor of St. Gregory Palamas and the orthodox tradition of the Church. Do you realize that the Black Death occurs at this same time? As much as half of the European population dies? My last article, in which I talked (among other things) about the end of Medievalism and its relation to Modernism, also spurred this investigation. Yes, the bubonic plague arrives in Constantinople in 1347, the same year a seven-year-long civil war for the right to succeed Emperor Andronikos III Palaiologos concludes in favor of John Kantakouzenos, who frees St. Gregory Palamas from prison and has him consecrated archbishop of Thessalonica — who (Kantakouzenos, I mean) in order to maintain control of the dwindling Empire (amidst catastrophic losses from plague and a brutal struggle with the Genoese Republic over economic control of the Bosphorus) allies with Ottoman Turks against budding John Palaiologos and his Serbian allies in the Balkans. That’s in 1352, when the Ottomans, taking advantage of the Empire’s weakness, for the first time cross into Gallipoli and take a European fortress. Yes, this is the same time the Ottomans grow, from being just one Turkish principality among many, into an enormous, history-altering empire. In my youth I was given the impression, through cultural osmosis, that the Black Death occurs in some “Dark Ages”, an historic wasteland in which nothing else of consequence happens. Nothing could be further from the truth.

So how’s that for an opening paragraph? Overlong and overstuffed, I agree. But it gives you a little taste of how everything has spun out into infinity for me the past couple weeks. History, the way things transpire, the patterns of it — it all carries meaning for the human soul. All the cosmos tells the story of Christ, of His Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection, whether or not we have eyes to see it, in the act of illumination, that is. Referring to the trials Israel experienced in the wilderness, St. Paul says, “All these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages are come” (1 Cor. 10:11). The Greek word for ensamples there is τύποι, types, as in patterns pressed into creation by a procreative stamp. And even before the events are written down for our “admonition” (νουθεσία, calling the attention of the mind), they are happening in the lives of Israel according to these pedagogical patterns. Every life in the world, not just of biblical Israel, transpires according to typological patterns, which, if read properly, paint a picture of Christ, of His suffering, and of the triumph of His love. And Christians above all should be the ones to be reading this admonition properly, “upon whom the ends of the ages are come,” the ends being τὰ τέλη, the purposes, the destinations of all the ages of this world — which ends have been revealed to anyone whom has had revealed to them the incarnate Son of God, the Logos who rules all things.

Introduction to the timeline

So to answer my instigating question, I focus on finite historical particulars, but none of them exist outside the context of all the other particulars. The hesychastic escape from the flood of Western heterodoxy and the hard-to-imagine catastrophe of the Black Death occur in a world where so many other stories are ongoing, and they’re all interrelated. Space and time aren’t God, so they do have limits to their existence. In this project, I symbolize those limits by creating a timeline, reproduced below, that focuses only on the Roman world from 1300 to 1400. A lot of things are invisible to this lens. Timur (Tamerlane) amasses a gigantic empire in this time period, but because it exists beyond the Roman world, he doesn’t show up until basically a footnote at the end. The Strasbourg Cathedral... it’s amazing: I zoom out my perspective to take in a whole century, and it’s still not wide enough to see the building of this magisterial edifice, restarted in 1190 and not completed until 1439. This Cathedral tells the story of the transition from Romanesque to Gothic in its very design, and when the north tower is constructed in the 1400s, it’s the tallest building in the world. So far in my work on this timeline, a lot of architecture — so descriptive of civilization — has been left off it. That’s emblematic of a lot that I’m missing, since my scope can only be so big. I reserve the right to add to the timeline as my research lives on, but I can’t afford to focus on just this — and completionism is not the purpose of the project. I can’t miss the forest for the trees.

What is the relationship of the two halves of the Roman Church at this time, cut in twain by schism and following very different trajectories? The question could not be more relevant to me who am from a broken Irish Catholic family — and whose spiritual life has been redeemed and transformed by Eastern Orthodoxy, lo, these past twenty-five years — I who, lo, remain embedded, soul-and-body, deep in a world of Western heterodoxy. My life is a living schism, so pardon me if I obsess over it a little! What I see in the 1300s is the Roman world, in the East and in the West, going through very much the same spiritual process, but in entirely different, corresponding ways. What happens in the East externally by means of the encroaching Ottoman Turks — this hostile, dominating force opposed to faith in the Trinity and the Incarnation — happens concurrently in the West internally, by means of ideas and passions. Where the Eastern Church retains the symbolism of a regained paradise that casts out evil and externalizes it, the Western Church redefines catholicity (“according to the whole”) to mean embracing the whole of good and evil, internalizing disintegration along with wholeness, in the way, maybe, that those two phenomena co-exist in the world (in the oikoumene), but not in paradise.

It’s easier to express this historical synchronicity in that order, starting with the external and moving to the internal, but I think the causality may have occurred in the reverse. It was impossible for the Orthodox East to follow the path the heterodox West determined to take; it would be like tearing down the walls of paradise. However, it was equally impossible for them not to shoulder the same consequences in an appropriate form. As Christ bears the consequences of his beloved’s sins, so must Christians do the same for their beloved. Therefore, in come the Ottomans.

For Roman East and Roman West are one Church, soul and body. Even as a man retains hypostatic unity of soul and body even in death (their separation), so when we talk about the Great Schism of East and West, we’re talking about one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church undergoing the ephemeral trauma of death. The body returns to the earth, groaning and travailing in pain (cf. Rom. 8:22), while the soul is robed in white and cries aloud under the altar in heaven, longing for the Lord to put creation right (cf. Rev. 6:9–11) — longing, that is, for the Resurrection, to wit, “the redemption of the body” (Rom. 8:23). I refer you back to this chart, which I first made when discussing the Fifth Ecumenical Council to illustrate the symbolic meaning of the pentarchy put into law by Emperor Justinian the Great:

Old Rome is the body and New Rome the soul, the two natures of one human being, even as Roman ingenuity in law and infrastructure provides imperial body for the Hellenic culture of knowledge. The soul-city of Rome has to be built anew in Christ because it had been lost to false belief, its powers scattered upon the earth. But Virgil instinctively knew the source of Rome’s life was seeded from Troy when he wrote the Aeneid. Constantinople is that new Troy, the soul of Rome brought back to life through faith in Christ. For neither Hellenic soul nor Roman body have any life in them without the Hebrew Spirit. This, in short, is the symbolic meaning of the royal insignia being written on Christ’s Cross in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin (John 19:20). This is why St. Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles, must go from Jerusalem to Rome, and why St. Peter, the chief of the Apostles, is drawn there as well. In order to bring the descendants of Adam and Eve back into Paradise through the Tree of the Cross, the mind of the soul must descend into the body’s heart. “All these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages are come.” Even as God must come down to men, so the soul must come down to the body. The mind reaches down to the heart while animated by the Spirit, and through such Christian, hesychastic sanctity all the world rises up and is united to God.

Tripartite arrangements — inevitable?

Now, the position of Antioch and Alexandria as the two lower powers of the soul, thymos and epithymia (anger and desire), is also biblically based. In the time of Hellenization after the death of Alexander the Great, Seleucid Syria (centered in Antioch) and Ptolemaic Egypt (centered in Alexandria) fulfilled the prophecy of Daniel concerning the King of the North and the King of the South (Dan. 11). These were the two warring Hellenistic kingdoms Israel found itself caught between after the Persians and before the Romans. The Seleucids were a strict martial society that dominated Judea and afflicted them with masculine adversity. Ptolemaic Alexandria with its flesh-pots, abundant grain, and famous library promising all the wisdom of the world tempted Judeans with feminine prosperity. These two poles of Hellenistic dialectic were modeled after the pattern of spiritual death (the longing and lording of Gen. 3:16), and the Holy Maccabees showed the martyric way out, prefiguring the death of Christ Himself. But the lower passions are to the soul what the nations are to Judea, as St. Maximus postulates (Ad Thal 51.17–19), which is to say they are to be saved through Judea. The passions of desire and anger are to be put to their proper use in Christ, commanded by the logos (reason) as submitted to the nous illumined by the Spirit, as I have written about many times before. The Hellenic cultures of Antioch and Alexandria have their important roles to play in the Body of Christ, when ruled by the mind in the heart.

But after the Arab Conquest in the seventh century, they no longer participate in the Empire. This is where I find the history that develops in the next epoch so fascinating. In the West, north of Rome, first the Frankish Carolingian Empire vies for Roman control, and then the German Ottonian Empire. As the centuries wear on, the situation settles into a tripartite dialectic of the papacy, France, and the German Empire (not called the “Holy Roman Empire” until 1254). Meanwhile in the East, Constantinople hardly ever knows peace with its northern neighbors. First the Bulgarian Empire eats up a huge chunk of the Balkans and continually hectors their Roman neighbors even after their Christianization led by the disciples of Sts. Cyril and Methodius in the late ninth century — causing problems, moreover, with the gnostic anti-authoritarian Bogomil heresy which runs rampant there. Then in later centuries, the Serbian princes, long a thorn in Rome’s side since about the seventh century, but never united enough to cause major disturbance, begin to rally around strong Orthodox leaders, becoming a Kingdom and then an Empire in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Their presence proves very valuable when King St. Stefan Milutin resists Constantinople’s false union with Rome after the Second Council of Lyon in 1274. It proves a liability when the patricidal Emperor Stefan Dušan damn near conquers the whole Balkans in the years leading up to the Black Death, threatening Constantinople at its weakest point and playing an unhealthful role in its succession wars.

So in the epoch after the Arab Conquest and the Seven Ecumenical Councils, an epoch when the Great Schism develops and ossifies, we see materializing two Christian imperial powers to the north of both Old Rome and New Rome. On both sides of the Schism, it appears to be the job of Rome to negotiate with these powers, like the charioteer of reason steering the horses of the passions towards a noble goal, the tripartite pattern of the soul just manifesting fractally whenever it’s called upon. France and Bulgaria would be the representatives of epithymia, I believe, Paris being the new Alexandria (as if it got its name from the Iliad), and the Bulgarian way of nurturing hesychasm, first at Paroria, then at Kelifarevo, feeling especially maternal (plus that nation’s Bogomil tendencies perhaps could be indicative of a radically epithymetic political sympathy). The Germans and the Serbs would represent thymos. The Ottonian dynasty emerges from Saxony, and considering how Charlemagne originally “Christianizes” the Saxons — with total and extreme brutality (at least before Alcuin gets him to soften up) — it makes sense that such traumatic origins would produce a thymic character. And royal power intertwines with true Christian sanctity more closely among Serbs than any other people I can think of. Even in more recent times, we typically know Germans to be strict and orderly, the French pleasure-loving and libertine. I can tell you, classic Yugoslav cinema (of which I’ve seen a lot) tells, like, zero stories about women. Much of it is brilliant, but it’s all men telling stories about men; Serbia is a very masculine culture. Bulgarian culture, on the other hand, has about as big a profile on the world stage as women do in Yugoslav cinema. But among the very few Bulgarian films I’ve been enticed to see, the greatest director just happens to be a woman, Binka Zhelyazkova. Its diminutive cinematic footprint aside, Bulgaria’s greatest cultural contributions appear to be their sprawling rose-growing industry and the folk tradition of women’s choral singing, which is as utterly sublime as it overpoweringly feminine.

I digress. The psychological stories that these tripartite historical arrangements are symbolically embodying on either side of the ecclesial divide might be telling us something important about the consequences of our different theological ways of being. It’s one of the things I contemplate when looking at this history, searching for the patterns of the Lord’s admonition in the lives of His peoples. I don’t always see everything clearly, and it’s hard to absorb all the facts — but I try. I speculate, conjecture.

John Kantakouzenos

One pattern I think I see operating here concerns the tragedy of Emperor John Kantakouzenos. This gets to my original inquiry into the historical background of the hesychast controversy and helps us reflect on the significance of St. Gregory Palamas’s teachings as we get ready to celebrate him for the second Sunday of Lent. Here, though, I’m forced again to acknowledge the limits of my scholarship — there’s so much I don’t know about this Emperor and his era in detail. He wrote an over 1,700-page history accounting for his considerable actions spanning thirty-six extremely consequential years which include two lengthy, convoluted succession wars, followed by his own disastrous and eventful imperial reign. The whole reason he had time to write all this is because he was forced to abdicate after everything went so poorly. After fighting so long and so hard to serve the Empire, he just said, “Yeah, I’m just going to... go to a monastery and think about what I’ve done.” Apparently he scripts it so that he comes across very well in his Histories, in which he writes about himself in the third person. I don’t know — only a portion is translated, and I haven’t read it.

Here’s what I know, and here’s what I think about it. John Kantakouzenos was a solid supporter of St. Gregory Palamas. Whenever hesychasts were succeeding politically in their defense against their humanist attackers, Kantakouzenos was often in the background helping it happen. That doesn’t mean he was a saint whose other actions were models of Christian living, while his political foes were all Scholastic-minded mouth-breathers, though. No, it’s actually remarkable how compartmentalized political and theological disputes were among East Romans at this time. Kantakouzenos had enemies who maintained friendship with St. Gregory Palamas. There were staunch anti-Palamites who supported Kantakouzenos! Not for nothing do Westerners look at these people and call them Byzantine. It’s all very hard to figure, but then this half of Christian culture isn’t accustomed to making absolutes out of things that are worldly and therefore relative.

So Kantakouzenos is the Palamite booster you want to root for if you’re coming at this from a theological perspective. But trust not in princes and the sons of men. In the Second Palaiologan Civil War — in which, through some sequence of events, he found himself contending with the regents of an underage heir for the imperial throne, opponents who allied themselves with a Serbia off its meds under an opportunistic and aggrandizing Emperor Stefan Dušan — John Kantakouzenos allies himself with Muslim Turks. Aydinids, not Ottomans. And why not? You don’t discriminate against the neighbors God has given you just because they believe differently from you. So he allies with these Muslims in order to fight with these overweening Christian Serbs, and that’s how he comes into power. That’s how St. Gregory Palamas gets let out of jail and is made archbishop of Thessalonica. It’s the year 1347. Everything’s looking up for good ol’ Emperor John Kantakouzenos.

But 1347’s also the year the Golden Horde catapults some diseased corpses into the Genoese trading port they’re besieging at Kaffa in Crimea (God bless you, Mongols). The bubonic plague arrives in Constantinople in short order, and from there to the rest of the Roman world. Then, the next year, 1348, you see that big tower going up in that neighborhood over there? Yeah, that’s not ours. The same Genoese traders who brought us the plague are fortifying the port on the edge of Constantinople that was granted them on the condition that they never fortify it. Works include the Galata Tower which is now the tallest building in the capital. And, oh, they control a vast majority of the customs dues collected in the Bosphorus now, so the Empire’s quickly running out of cash. Don’t worry, there’s always the navy — oh wait, no, the navy was all used up in the succession war that just ended.

Anyways, it was bad times. The Empire paid a dear price for championing hesychasm so publicly like that. The devil has feelings too, you know. But they did it again: a council at the capital in 1351 defeated the last anti-Palamites and vindicated St. Gregory. Pfft... just rubbin’ the devil’s face in it. So then the underage heir to the throne whose regents Kantakouzenos overcame? By 1352, he’s of age now, and with Serbian allies and Venetian money, he’s ready to claim his birthright. His Serbian army strikes at the Emperor’s son Matthew Kantakouzenos in Thrace. This is his son they’re going after. What do you think he’s going to do? Well, he had allied with the Turks before; it should work again. He gets the Ottomans this time. They’ve been eating up all this territory next door in western Anatolia. It’s time to bring them across the straits into Europe. They’re invited in by the Emperor. That’s how it begins. It’s a long story from there, but I just want to point out: 1351, final vindication for St. Gregory Palamas. 1352, first victories of the Ottomans in the Balkans.

It reminds me of King Hezekiah in 4 Kingdoms (2 Kings; see ch. 18–20). There are so many bad kings in the Books of Kingdoms. So many high places that are allowed to persist. Then along comes King Hezekiah, and we’re told he’s a good king, like, a really good king! He removes all the high places, he breaks the idols to pieces, he does what is right in the eyes of the Lord. Here we have a good leader we can root for. Evil Assyria conquers Samaria and threatens to take Jerusalem next. Hezekiah prays to the Lord as he should, confessing that God is the all-powerful creator and begging for salvation — not for his own sake — but that the true God will be known among all the earth. The Lord responds (through the holy Prophet Isaiah) with words of harsh paternal rebuke... and affirmation that He, the Lord, will save Jerusalem and destroy the villainous Assyrian king, yea, not for Hezekiah’s sake, but for His own sake and for the sake of His servant David. Repentance works! Finally a king I can aspire to emulate! Hezekiah falls ill nigh to death. Isaiah tells him he’s going to die. And Hezekiah prays to the Lord with great sorrow that he be remembered. And it works! He is granted recovery and fifteen more years of life. This guy... this guy’s the man.

Then the son of the king of Babylon shows up at his door with gifts and condolences for his sickness. Hezekiah, so happy to see him and his retinue (he’s just so happy to be alive), brings them directly into his house and compulsively just starts showing them every piece of wealth that he has. He has this treasure, and this treasure; oh, and we keep this treasure over here... and so on. Only after showing them absolutely all the riches in his possession, he sends them on their way. And so the Prophet Isaiah calls him aside and asks him what just happened. Who were those guys? They were from far away, from Babylon! And what were they doing in your house? I was showing them everything!

And so Isaiah lays into him and prophesies the fall of Judea and the Babylonian captivity. Emperor John Kantakouzenos invites the Ottomans into his house and shows them his treasure. What do we think is going to happen when we do this? But does not something very similar happen when the saints speak theology aloud, putting the mysteries of the Christian way into language for others to understand, even those who have not themselves experienced the mysteries? I find it very meaningful that the Ottomans are first shown through the door of Europe just when the hesychastic doctrine has been made explicit in public argument. This is an “ensample” for us, and a warning. St. Gregory of course did nothing wrong. He did what all the Church Fathers have done. Only once the truth is attacked and lies are actively leading people away and desecrating that which is holy, do the Fathers articulate what heavenly knowledge is needed to defend the flock. But then once that’s accomplished, anyone can learn the teachings, the concepts, the language, the mere expressions, and they might not use the knowledge for the purpose of repentance. The Fathers share the knowledge in the first place because it is needed to help people enter into the experience of the Church. But once it’s public, people are free to use it for other purposes, for passionate purposes, for purposes that somehow serve our ego.

Think of it this way. The more and more one uses the electronic highways to help people understand who Christ is and the manner by which He operates in the world, incidentally, the more one helps train AIs how to mimic Christ better and thereby build a better antichrist. Citing the AI mechanism might be helpful for some readers to understand what I mean, but its presence is not actually necessary for this problem to occur. The more one studies theology in mere words and concepts, like “essence” and “energies,” without having the experience that goes into the production of that knowledge — the experience, that is, of following Christ’s commandments unto purification of soul and body — the more one creates a false image of Christ with one’s life. If there’s no theological study, then there’s no image of Christ — no image that looks like Christ anyhow. But with theological study, one can put forth an image of Christ, and it might be all in vain because it’s all built up with concepts, with analogies and sublations; it’s not inbreathed with the Holy Spirit.

Theology is useful only insofar as one approaches it for the purpose of being drawn into the experience of the Holy Spirit. When there’s temptation for it to be used rather for the sake of pride, well, that’s where suffering through adversity comes in handy, to keep one humble. What would the Eastern Romans have done if they were given freedom from 1351 on? Puffed themselves up with pride and contented themselves with the pleasures of this world? Gone the Russian route and shown the West how to really build an antichrist? The risk of this last sin has not gone away; it has only been forestalled through political incapacity, and glory be to God for that. But earlier, I suggested the East underwent the Turkish captivity out of Christian solidarity with what was happening internally in the Western soul. I want to make clear that’s not to say the Eastern soul didn’t have its own weaknesses, making the fall of Constantinople the right call for their own sake, as devastating and awful as that sounds. The causes can be both. Sometimes sinners just need a little Babylonian exile. It worked for the Judeans. True, the Turkish yoke went on a few hundred years longer than that, but then the East Romans had been given so, so much more knowledge to bear.

So what are we doing now?

St. Gregory Palamas of course was not ignorant of the dangers of theology abstracted from experience. He had all the technical knowledge to speak meaningfully about essence and energies and the knowledge of God, and he did so when he had to. But in his writings against Barlaam, for example, like in the Triads, he seems eager above all to argue for the proper method of theology based in noetic empiricism — that and, using Barlaam as a proxy, to bombard the Scholastic method with everything he’s got. The humanist West went another route, and that’s the world we’re all living in now.

I can’t pretend I’m not entirely immersed in that world. I can’t pretend that I’m not a Western Roman. I mean, I don’t see any Ottomans around, oppressing me externally. The ideas and passions, though, corrupting me internally, those are here. And that’s where the battles for freedom I’m meant to fight are. But I can’t do that without the Jerusalem-mind descending into my Rome-heart. And I can’t do that without first my New Rome–reason disciplining all the Franks, Germans, Serbs, and Bulgarians tussling around inside me. How ironic that I prepare for the Sunday of St. Gregory Palamas with so much ... scholarship!

This is just where we are right now. It’s 2025. I have high-speed internet and a Synaxarion missing a May–June volume. I sleep nightly on an electric recliner next to a paperback copy of the Triads self-published by the translator. I pray the Jesus Prayer and listen to what counted as rock music seven hundred years ago, wondering whether I, with all my heterodox forebears, am stealing Beauty before the time:

FOURTEENTH-CENTURY TIMELINE OF THE ROMAN WORLD

Climate

• ca. 1300, a transition occurs between the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age, during which (in Northern Europe especially) winters began to be harshly cold and summers cold and wet

Halley’s Comet

• 1301, returns for the first time since 1222 and is visible from September to January of 1302; noted for its brilliance by Florentine chronicler Giovanni Villani, and seen also by the Florentine painter Giotto who a few years later uses it as a model for the star of Bethlehem in his painting The Adoration of the Magi

St. Gregory of Sinai

• ca. 1300, moves to Mt. Athos and lives as a hermit, having as a younger man become a monk on Mt. Sinai before receiving the tradition of hesychastic prayer from a monk named Arsenios on Crete

• ca. 1325–1328, flees Turks and settles in the southeast corner of Bulgaria, founding a monastery at Paroria with protection from the Bulgarian Emperor Ivan Alexander, spreading hesychasm there

• 1330s, returns to Mt. Athos briefly, but plays no part in the hesychastic controversy that erupts there

• 1346, his death in Bulgaria amongst his disciples, chiefly St. Theodosius of Trnovo

St. Stefan Milutin

• 1299, strikes peace with Constantinople after 15 years of war subsequent to the false union of Lyon

• 1301–1311, battles with his brother Dragutin, a quasi-vassal who had been king before him, but abdicated

• 1312, aids Constantinople in the defeat of the Turcopoles at the Battle of Gallipoli

• 1314, his son Stefan Uroš III revolts against him, is captured, blinded, and exiled to Constantinople

• 1316, his brother St. Stefan Dragutin becomes the monk Theoctistus and dies

• 1320, pardons his son Stefan Uroš III, whose sight had been miraculously healed by St. Nicholas; builds the catholicon of Hilandar Monastery, Mt. Athos

• 1321, founds Gračanica Monastery; his death

Marco Polo

• ca. 1300, his manuscript The Travels of Marco Polo, about his journey as a Venetian merchant along the Silk Road in East Asia from 1271 to 1295, spreads across Europe

• 1324, dies after a year of sickness at his home in Venice

Gertrude the Great of Helfta

• 1302, a Benedictine nun of Helfta in Saxony of the Holy Roman Empire, known for her visions, invisible stigmata, nuptial mysticism, her written works, and being an early proponent of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, dies at age 46

Unam Sanctam

• 1302, papal bull issued by Pope Boniface VIII says, “We declare, we proclaim, we define that it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff”

• 1303, the bull, a broadside against the power of King Philip IV of France, precipitates the “Outrage of Anagni,” when the Pope’s residence is stormed by mercenaries working for King Philip and the aged Pope is held captive for days; he dies a few weeks after being freed

• 1312–1313, Dante Alighieri writes De Monarchia, refuting the bull’s claim that the spiritual sword of the church holds the state’s temporal sword in subordination

Battle of Bapheus

• 1302, the nascent Ottoman state attains its first major military victory, against the East Romans, from which is captured Bithynia (Anatolian region neighboring the Bosphorus) outside the walled cities

Metropolitan Theoleptus of Philadelphia

• 1310, having received hesychastic formation on Mt. Athos in his youth, and having been the faithful bishop of Philadelphia in Lydia of eastern Anatolia since 1284, he successfully leads the defense of that city from an Ottoman attack

• ca. 1310–1316, gives spiritual formation to an adolescent Gregory Palamas, son of a pious aristocratic family in Constantinople, until the young man’s departure for Mt. Athos

• 1322, he dies, leaving behind a rich literary legacy of hesychastic instruction, prominently in letters to an abbess in Constantinople

John Duns Scotus

• 1300, a Scottish priest at Oxford, he begins the work for which he is best known, the Ordinatio, his revised commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sentences, teaching the reality of universals and the lack of distinction between essence and existence

• 1302, leaves Oxford to lecture on the Sentences at the university in Paris, transcribed as the Reportatio parisiensis; is expelled for agreeing with the pope over the French king on an issue of taxation

• 1304, is back lecturing at Paris

• 1300–1305, writes the Collationes, 46 short disputations

• 1307, is summoned to the Franciscan university at Cologne

• 1308, dies at Cologne

Theodoric of Freiberg

• ca. 1300, a Dominican friar and heavy neoplatonist, finishes a three-year stint as master of theology at Paris and returns to Freiburg, Saxony (Holy Roman Empire)

• ca. 1304–1311, while serving as Provincial superior of Dominicans in Germany, writes On the Rainbow and the impressions created by irradiance, an accurate scientific explanation of rainbows, a breakthrough in optical physics

• 1310, appointed Vicar provincial of Germany

• ca. 1311, his death

Giotto

• early 1300s, has multiple painting commissions in Florence

• ca. 1305, frescoes the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua

• 1306, moves to Assisi and paints there

• 1311, returns to Florence and paints there

• 1329–1333, receives a royal commission in Naples

• 1334, is appointed chief architect to Florence Cathedral and concentrates on the bell tower

• 1337, he dies, having only finished the lower floor of the bell tower

• 1359, the bell tower of the Florence Cathedral is completed

St. Maximus, Metropolitan of Kiev and all Rus’

• 1299, as instructed by the Mongol Khan, transfers his see from Kiev to Vladimir on the Klyasma River, meeting the approval of the Mother of God, who gifts him a miraculous omophorion

• 1301, Patriarch Athanasius I of Constantinople accedes to King Yuri I of Galicia’s request that a metropolitanate of Halych be established to rival the move

• 1305, his death

Wars of Scottish Independence

• 1296–1328, First War, beginning when England invades Scotland

• 1305, Sir William Wallace, the famed leader of Scottish independence, is arrested and taken to London, where he is tried and convicted for treason and atrocities against civilians, dragged naked through the city, then hanged, drawn, and quartered, his head cut off, dipped in tar, and exhibited on a spike on London Bridge

• 1328, the Treaty of Edinburgh–Northampton, recognizing Scotland’s independence in exchange for money

• 1332–1357, Second War, beginning when the English king reneges on the Treaty of Edinburgh–Northampton and unsuccessfully sponsors a claimant to the Scottish throne, then in 1333 just invades Scotland again

• 1346, the English capture the rightful heir to the Scottish throne at the Battle of Neville’s Cross

• 1357, the Treaty of Berwick ends the war, allowing for Scottish independence and freeing the Scottish king for a ransom

• 1370s, Archdeacon John Barbour of Aberdeen writes (in the Scots language) the epic poem The Brus, about the First War of Scottish Independence

Norman Ireland

• 1302–1307, the first Papal Taxation register is compiled by Norman parliament, the first census of Ireland and all its properties

• 1315–1318, Edward Bruce of Scotland invades, stirring Gaelic rebellion against the Norman lords; the Great Famine afflicting Western Europe occurs at the same time and hits Ireland hard

• 1333, William Donn de Burgh, the Norman 3rd Earl of Ulster is murdered and his lands are divided up among his kin, precipitating in Connacht the Burke/de Burgh Civil War which causes English authority to be overthrown west of the River Shannon, while in Ulster the Gaelic O’Neill clan take over all the earl’s lands

• 1337–1360, the Edwardian War (first phase of The Hundred Years’ War) draws the English crown’s attention away from Ireland and towards France

• 1348, the Black Death arrives, devastating the Anglo-Norman towns but not so much the Gaelic countryside; English power recedes back inside the Pale around Dublin while Gaelic culture thrives

• 1364, the O’Neills claim the title King of Ulster

Roman de Fauvel

• 1310, the first book of this satirical romance in French verse — about a horse (symbolic of the vices) who comes to be favored by the wealthy and powerful at the royal court — is written, attributed to Gervais du Bus, a clerk for the royal chancery

• 1314, the second book is written

• 1316–1317, Chaillou de Pesstain produces a much expanded edition including interpolations of 169 pieces of music indicative of the 14th-century style of polyphonic music to be dubbed ars nova (Fauvel is remembered today more by musicologists than students of literature)

The Queen Mary Psalter

• ca. 1310–1320, a unique and spectacular Latin Psalter with over 800 miniature illustrations is made by a single anonymous artist, probably in London, possibly for the French queen of the English king (it is named for Mary Tudor, who comes to possess it two centuries later)

Dante Alighieri

• 1300, as a member of the Physicians’ and Apothecaries’ Guild, serves as city prior for Florence for two months

• 1301, Black Guelphs, expelled from Florence for their support of the Pope, with the Pope’s support violently retake the city from the White Guelphs, who advocate for political independence from the Pope

• 1302, is exiled from Florence for his affiliation with the White Guelphs

• 1307, writes the Convivio (“Banquet”)

• ca. 1308, begins writing the Comedy, an epic vernacular poem in which the traditional threefold pattern of man’s relation with God (purification, illumination, and perfection) is re-imagined as Purgatorio, Paradiso, and the Empyrean

• 1312–1313, writes De Monarchia, advocating universal monarchy under Holy Roman Emperor Henry VII of Luxembourg and refuting the Unam Sanctam papal bull of 1302

• 1320, writes the Eclogues

• 1321, finishes the Comedy and dies

Meister Eckhart

• 1294–1302, serves as prior of the Dominican convent at Erfurt and as Provincial of Thuringia (Holy Roman Empire)

• 1302–1303, occupies the external Dominican chair of theology at Paris

• 1303–1311, returns to Erfurt and serves as Provincial superior for Saxony, overseeing 47 convents and founding three more

• 1311–1313, serves again as the external Dominican chair of theology at Paris, the only one since Thomas Aquinas to be asked back

• 1323/1324, leaves Strasbourg for Cologne

• 1325, begins to be investigated for erroneous teachings

• 1326, an inquisition is opened against him, though he is supported by his fellow Dominicans

• 1327, is convicted but appeals to the Pope, traveling to Avignon

• 1328, he dies while his case is still being reviewed at Avignon; the commission concludes against his favor

• 1329, the Pope issues a bull that condemns a list of Eckhart’s teachings as heretical (not Eckhart himself), but also states that Eckhart repented of these before his death

The Avignon Papacy

• 1305, King Philip IV of France pressures a deadlocked conclave to elect the Archbishop of Bordeaux as Pope Clement V, who refuses to move to Rome

• 1309, Pope Clement V moves the papacy to Avignon, France, then part of the Holy Roman Empire

• 1311–1312, the Council of Vienne (France) (numbered the 15th ecumenical council by Roman Catholics) disbands the Knights Templar, confiscates its property, and condemns them as heretics, all at the behest of King Philip, who happens to be greatly in debt to the military order

• 1314, the last leader of the Knights Templar is executed

• 1335, Pope Benedict XII tries to move the papacy to Bologna but can’t afford to, so he instead begins construction on the Palais des Papes at Avignon

• 1370, Pope Urban V dies, the only Avignon pope (of seven total) to be beatified

• 1376, Pope Gregory XI at last moves the papacy back to Rome

The Great Famine

• 1315–1317, afflicting Western Europe, ranging east to Poland and south to the Alps; this agricultural disaster marked the end of centuries of population growth in Western Europe

St. Michael Yaroslavich, Prince of Tver, Grand Prince of Vladimir

• 1304, after two decades as Prince of Tver, becomes the Grand Prince of Vladimir, succeeding his cousin

• 1314–1315, spends a year in Sarai after the succession of Özbeg Khan

• 1316, regains control of Novgorod after having lost it to Prince Yury of Moscow while in Sarai

• 1317, Özbeg favors Yury as ruler of Novgorod, but Yury is defeated; Yury’s wife, the sister of Özbeg, dies in the Grand Prince’s custody

• 1318, is summoned and executed by Özbeg on account of the khan’s sister’s death

St. Stefan Uroš III Dečanski

• 1314, revolts against his father, the king of Serbia, St. Stefan Milutin; is captured, blinded, and exiled to a monastery in Constantinople

• 1320, miraculously healed by St. Nicholas, is pardoned by his father and welcomed back to Serbia

• 1321, claims the throne upon his father’s death, along with his brother and cousin, starting a succession war

• 1322, is crowned king by the archbishop of Serbia

• 1323–1324, fights with and defeats his cousin Vladislav

• 1327–1330, constructs Visoki Dečani Monastery in Kosovo

• 1330, wins the Battle of Velbazhd, thwarting the invasion of Bulgaria and East Romans, but opts not to invade Roman territory afterward, alienating many nobles

• 1331, is overthrown and killed by his rebellious son Stefan Uroš IV Dušan

St. Peter, Metropolitan of Kiev and all Rus’ (at Vladimir and then Moscow)

• 1305, St. Maximus Metropolitan of Kiev, who had moved the see to Vladimir, and who approved St. Peter as his successor, dies

• 1308, is successfully nominated by the king of Galicia to the Patriarch of Constantinople as St. Maximus’s successor, to the chagrin of St. Michael of Tver, Grand Prince of Vladimir

• 1325, moves the see from Vladimir to Moscow upon the accession of Prince Ivan I, is still called Metropolitan of Kiev and all Rus’; begins construction of the Dormition Cathedral at the Kremlin

• 1326, his death

• 1339, his canonization

Tver Uprising

• 1326, Prince Alexander of Tver is given rule over the grand principality of Vladimir by the Özbeg Khan of the Golden Horde

• 1327, against the Prince’s counsel, a popular uprising rebels against the Golden Horde; it is put down with assistance from Prince Ivan I of Moscow and Prince Alexander of Suzdal, who in return are given to divide the rule of the grand principality of Vladimir

State of the Teutonic Order

• 1308, invited to Gdańsk by the Polish king to help repel Brandenburg aggression (from the Holy Roman Empire), the Teutonic Knights take the city for themselves (calling it Danzig) and massacre the inhabitants

• 1309, the Treaty of Soldin, by which the Knights purchase from Brandenburg the region of Gdańsk, Pomerelia, and Schwetz — disputed by the Poles

• 1326–1332, the Polish–Teutonic War

• 1343, the Treaty of Kalisz, restoring some territories to Poland

• 1346, the Teutonic Order purchases the Duchy of Estonia from the Kingdom of Denmark

• 1369–1370, the Battle of Rudau, a Teutonic victory in the Lithuanian Crusade

Jacques de Longuyon

• 1312, writes in French the epic poem Les Voeux du paon (“The Vows of the Peacock”) in which the idea of the “Nine Worthies” first appears; the work was written for Thibaut de Bar, bishop of Liège

Speculum Humanae Salvationis

• 1309–1324, an extremely popular anonymous Latin work of biblical typology written in rhyming verse, “Mirror of Human Salvation” list New Testament events with three Old Testament events each that prefigure them; among the most common illuminated manuscripts, its earliest witnesses date to 1324, and the text references the Avignon Papacy which begins in 1309

Odoric of Pordenone

• ca. 1319, a Franciscan friar from Friuli, he leaves Venice to travel as a missionary in the Far East

• 1329–1330, returns to Italy and writes of his journeys to India, Sumatra, Java, and China

• 1331, his death

Marsiglio of Padua

• ca. 1312–1313, serves as rector of the University of Paris, having previously been educated at his native Padua, Italy

• 1324, against the backdrop of Ludwig of Bavaria, king of the Romans and candidate for Holy Roman Emperor, locking horns with the papacy in Avignon over political rivalries in Italy, Marsiglio writes his best-known work, the political treatise Defensor pacis (“The Defender of Peace”), in which he argues, mostly from Scripture, that the church has no authority over the state and should be submissive to the state even in spiritual matters because in Scripture authority comes from the collective people of whom the monarch is the representative; in fact, sovereignty belongs to the people such that they should control how and by whom they are governed; he flees France and finds protection in the imperial court at Bavaria

• ca. 1325 or after, writes De translatione Imperii (“On the transfer of the Empire”) in which he justifies the transfer of the imperial seat first to the Franks and then to the Germans, and argues that this was done according to correct procedure

• 1326, travels with Ludwig of Bavaria to Italy and preaches against the Pope

• 1327, has his ideas declared heretical by the Pope and is excommunicated along with Ludwig

• 1328, Ludwig of Bavaria has a senator at Rome crown him Holy Roman Emperor and declares the Pope at Avignon to be deposed for reasons of heresy; he installs an antipope who is deposed the next year after Ludwig departs back north; while in Rome, Ludwig declares Marsiglio to be “spiritual vicar” of the city

• 1334, one pope dies and another takes his place

• ca. 1335, Emperor Ludwig softens his position with the new pope, which Marsiglio can’t do on principle, causing more moderate voices like William of Ockham to become more highly favored at court

• 1339–1342, writes the Defensor minor, reaffirming and elaborating on his political beliefs, commenting, moreover, on many social and ecclesiastical issues

• 1342, his death, in Munich, still excommunicated by the Pope

William of Ockham

• 1309–1321, studies at Oxford

• 1321–1324, produces many highly influential philosophical writings, pioneering the nominalist worldview (whereby metaphysical universals are denied existence beyond concepts in the mind) and the field of epistemology (whereby pretensions to system building are undercut by a simplifying critical logic)

• 1324–1327, his commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sentences is accused of heresy, and he is ordered to Avignon to face the charges but finds himself having to defend instead the Franciscan Order’s teaching on poverty

• 1328, flees Avignon with other Franciscans, including minister general Michael of Cesena, and takes refuge in the Holy Roman Empire; he is excommunicated for fleeing but never condemned as a heretic

• 1332–1342, produces many political writings

• 1342, upon Michael of Cesena’s death, becomes the leader of Franciscans in exile in the Holy Roman Empire

• 1347, his death

Ottoman conquest of Bithynian cities

• 1317–1326, the Siege of Prusa in Bithynia; the Ottomans take their first walled city, since known as Bursa

• 1323/1324, death of Osman I, founder of the Turkish Ottoman principality (not yet an empire)

• 1329, Battle of Pelekhan; Emperor Andronikos III is wounded as Roman military presence in Anatolia is ended

• 1331, the Ottomans take Nicea

• 1337, the Ottomans take Nicomedia

East Roman Civil Wars

• 1321–1328, the First Palaiologan Civil War, which sees Emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos eventually overcome by his grandson Andronikos III Palaiologos, with help from his faithful chief minister John Kantakouzenos

• 1341–1347, the Second Palaiologan Civil War, a struggle for succession following the death of Andronikos III, from which John VI Kantakouzenos (with Aydinid allies) emerges victorious over the regents of young John V Palaiologos

• 1352, John V Palaiologos, now twenty years old, allied with Venice and Serbia, attacks Matthew, son of Emperor John VI Kantakouzenos, who counterattacks victoriously with Ottoman allies (giving them their first taste of victory in the Balkans)

• 1353, from the island of Tenedos, John V Palaiologos unsuccessfully tries to take Constantinople, and John VI Kantakouzenos makes his son Matthew co-emperor

• 1354, John V Palaiologos enters Constantinople when John VI Kantakouzenos’s public support is low for all kinds of reasons; John VI Kantakouzenos abdicates and takes monastic tonsure, retiring to write his Histories detailing events from 1320 to 1356 from his perspective; John V Palaiologos is enthroned

• 1357, Emperor John V Palaiologos, with help from Serbia, finally defeats Matthew Kantakouzenos and his Ottoman allies

St. Gregory Palamas

• 1316, around twenty years old, having already excelled in secular philosophy as an aristocrat in Constantinople, but having also received spiritual formation from the hesychastic Metropolitan Theoleptus of Philadelphia, young Gregory flees to Mt. Athos to become a novice under St. Nicodemus of Vatopedi

• 1318, becomes a monk at Vatopedi

• ca. 1321, moves to the Great Lavra after the death of St. Nicodemus

• ca. 1324, retreats to the hermitage of Glossia

• 1326, is ordained a priest in Thessalonica, whither he and companions from Mt. Athos had fled for protection from Turkish pirates, after which he leaves to found a hermitage near Beroea

• ca. 1330, returns to Mt. Athos, fleeing Serbian incursions into Macedonia, residing at a hermitage attached to the Great Lavra

• 1335–1336, is made abbot of Esphigmenou Monastery on Mt. Athos, but only lasts a year before retreating to his hermitage

• 1338, begins writing against Barlaam, who serves as a proxy for Scholasticism and Western Humanism, defending the Church’s hesychastic tradition of prayer and the patristic distinction between essence and energies, forever distinguishing the Church’s orthodox way of life and theology from the heterodoxy which had taken root and blossomed in the West since the Great Schism

• 1341, councils in Constantinople vindicate St. Gregory and denounce Barlaam and Gregory Akindynos; the Emperor dies and the Second Palaiologan Civil War begins

• 1344, is condemned and imprisoned by a new council at Constantinople, which favors Gregory Akindynos

• 1347, upon John VI Kantakouzenos’s ascent to the throne, is vindicated by a new council, released from prison, and consecrated Archbishop of Thessalonica

• 1350, is finally installed in Thessalonica after being rejected by the people there

• 1351, receives his final vindication at a council at Constantinople, in defeat of Nikephoras Gregoras

• 1354, is captured by Turkish pirates while on route to Constantinople, and spends a year in detention at the Ottoman court

• 1359, his death

• 1368, his canonization

Petrarch

• 1316–1323, studies law first at Montpelier, then at Bologna; his earliest poems, about the death of his mother, date to this time

• 1326, upon his father’s death, he returns to his family’s adopted home of Avignon to take minor ecclesiastical orders in the house of Cardinal Giovanni Colonna and dedicate himself to classical study and to writing, mostly in Latin

• 1327, begins writing poems in vernacular Italian, later compiled as Il Canzoniere

• 1336, climbs to the peak of Mount Ventoux for recreation’s sake

• 1337–1343, writes a first draft of his epic poem Africa, about the Second Punic War — while fathering two illegitimate children (contrary to his clerical orders), whom he later legitimizes

• 1341, his celebrity as a poet culminates in being crowned poet laureate by senators in Rome

• 1342–1343, documents in Latin prose his crisis of faithfulness in Secretum, a trilogy of dialogues between himself and an imagined St. Augustine; his writings become more religious from this point forward

• 1345, discovers in the Verona Cathedral library a collection of Cicero’s letters not previously known, an event associated with the dawn of Renaissance humanism

• 1346–1347, lives in Vaucluse, France, revising De vita solitaria and writing De otio religioso

• 1350, makes a pilgrimage to Rome and renounces a life of sensual pleasure

• 1368, moves to his final home at Arquà near Padua

• 1374, his death

Jean Buridan

• mid-1320s, receives a master of arts degree at the University of Paris and begins a lifelong teaching and writing career there, queerly never leaving the field of arts to study law or theology and never joining a monastic order but remaining a secular cleric

• 1330s–1350s, as the most influential French philosopher of the century, he produces writings that are widely used as text books on logic and Aristotelian philosophy, which subjects he radically reorganizes according to nomimalist principles based on terminist logic, eschewing metaphysics; his best known work is Compendium on Dialectic; in the realm of physics, he originates the concept of impetus, an anticipation of inertia, which concept is foreign to Aristotelianism

• ca. 1358–1361, he dies, under what circumstances it is not known, but many legends are told, mostly involving some form of infidelity or profligacy

The Edwardian War

• 1337–1360, first phase of The Hundred Years’ War between England and France

• 1346, the Battle of Crécy, a major loss for the French

• 1356, the Battle of Poitiers, in which King John II of France is captured (and later released for a ransom)

The Black Death

• 1338–1339, Nestorian grave sites in Issyk-Kul (Kyrgyzstan) mention plague

• 1343, the Mongol Golden Horde declares all Italian merchants to be expelled from Crimea

• 1347, laying siege on the Genoese trading port Kaffa in Crimea, Mongols catapult diseased corpses into the town; Genoese traders carry the disease to Constantinople

• 1348, Friuli earthquake in central Italy, viewed as an omen

• 1347–1353, bubonic plague kills as much as half of Europe and a third of the Middle East

• 1348–1350, pogroms against Jews occur, starting in Toulon, France, also in Barcelona of Aragon, and in various cities of the Holy Roman Empire, Basel, Erfurt, Freiburg, Strasbourg (where in 1349, most notably, 2,000 Jews are burned before the plague even enters the city), and Brussels, destroying communities and causing emigration to Poland and Lithuania

• 1348–1353, Florentine writer Giovanni Boccaccio writes The Decameron

Byzantine–Genoese War

• 1341–1347, the Second Palaiologan Civil War depletes the imperial naval fleet

• 1348, the Genoese Republic, sensing the desperation of the diminished empire, fortifies its port at Galata, a suburb of Constantinople (breaking the terms of the 1261 treaty permitting its establishment), building, among other things, the Galata Tower, taller than anything else in the capital

• 1348–1349, Genoese domination of custom dues in the Bosphorus leads Emperor John VI Kantakouzenos to undercut their prices once he hastily refinances the navy, which in turn is destroyed by the Genoese upon declaring war; but attacks by land on Galata force a truce

• 1350, Constantinople allies with Venice against Genoa in the War of the Straits

Pierre Thomas, Latin Patriarch of Constantinople

• 1326–1328, enters the Carmelite Order at Bergerac, France and teaches there

• early 1330s, studies at Agen, France and is ordained a priest

• 1330s, teaches at Bordeaux, Albi, and Agen, then studies at Paris

• early 1340s, preaches at Cahors, where he leads a procession that miraculously ends a drought; returns to Paris to complete his degree in theology

• 1345, is elected Procurator General of his order and is sent to Avignon to be a preacher at the papal court

• late 1340s, returns to his studies at Paris and is made a master of theology before returning to Avignon

• 1353, preaches in the funeral procession of Pope Clement VI; unsuccessfully serves as a diplomat between Venice and Genoa

• 1354, is consecrated bishop of Patti and Lipari, Sicily and is sent to Serbia to negotiate with Emperor Stefan Dušan, who insincerely flirts with submitting to papal authority

• 1356, unsuccessfully tries to negotiate peace between Venice and Hungary

• 1357, travels to Constantinople to negotiate Emperor John V Palaiologos’s submission to papal authority in exchange for military assistance; obtains the former, and Eucharistic communion is established; but military aid never arrives, and the deal falls apart

• 1358, makes a pilgrimage in the Holy Land, after which on Cyprus he has ecstatic visions; possibly on his way back to Avignon, he stops in his see at Sicily

• 1359, is promoted to the see of Coron in the Peloponnese and is named by the pope Universal Legate for the East; with a fleet of Venetians and Knights Hospitallers of Rhodes (remnants of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem), travels to Smyrna and then Constantinople, participating in battles with the Ottomans, himself wielding a sword

• 1360, he gives King Peter I of Cyprus the title King of Jerusalem, which his father had before him

• 1362, he travels with King Peter to Avignon for permission to crusade in the Holy Land and re-establish the Kingdom of Jerusalem

• 1363, they receive their permission, and Thomas is elevated to Archbishop of Crete (a Venetian colony since the Fourth Crusade)

• 1364, is made the Latin Patriarch of Constantinople (a see created by the Fourth Crusade, which had become titular ever since East Romans retook the capital in 1261) and Legate of the Crusade; their Crusade to the Holy Land, however, is delayed by a war between Cyprus and Genoa

• 1365, the Crusaders sack, pillage, burn, and massacre Alexandria, Egypt at the command and with the participation of King Peter and Patriarch Pierre; but they flee the city to Cyprus in terror of retribution, against the will of their king and bishop; that Christmas on Cyprus Pierre Thomas falls deathly ill

• 1366, he dies in the first days of the year; King Peter I of Cyprus immediately initiates a canonization process, which comes to fruition in the 17th century

Stefan Uroš IV Dušan, Emperor of the Serbs and Romans

• 1314, as a child, is exiled with his rebellious father Stefan Uroš III to Constantinople and is educated there

• 1329, wins fame in battle with Bosnia during the War of Hum

• 1330, is victorious in the Battle of Velbazhd against invading Bulgarians

• 1331, overthrows and kills his father St. Stefan Dečanski; is crowned King of Serbia

• 1333–1334, conquers Macedonian territories from Constantinople

• 1335, conquers territory to the north from the Hungarians

• 1342, exploits the Second Palaiologan War to gain more territory from Constantinople

• 1343, begins calling himself King of Serbs and Romans

• 1343–1352, founds Monastery of the Holy Archangels at Prizren

• 1344, amidst the Second Palaiologan Civil War (1341–1347), his aggression in Macedonia provokes Constantinople to bring Aydinid allies into Europe

• 1345, gains imperial control of Mt. Athos

• 1346, has the Serbian patriarchate established and is crowned Emperor of the Serbs and Romans

• 1347, conquers Epirus, Aetolia, and Acarnania — and begins plans to take Constantinople

• 1349, promulgates the Dušan Code, a compilation of imperial laws

• 1350, wars with Bosnia, dividing his attention and causing temporary losses in Thessaly

• 1352, is anathematized along with the Serbian Patriarch by the Patriarch of Constantinople

• 1354–1355, defends against an attack from the Hungarians; gears up to fight against the Turks

• 1355, dies having brought the Serbian Empire to its apex, but is the only member of his dynasty not canonized as a saint

Golden Bull of 1356

• 1355, Charles IV of Luxembourg, King of Germany and Bohemia, is crowned Holy Roman Emperor

• 1356, a stable college of seven prince-electors (three archbishops and four secular rulers) is established in the Holy Roman Empire to resolve their difficulty (stemming back to the death of Frederick II in 1250) electing emperors for themselves

Bridget of Sweden

• 1316, at age 13 marries a nobleman, to whom she will bear eight children, six of whom survive infancy

• 1344, her husband dies, after which she becomes a Franciscan nun

• 1346, founds Vadstena Abbey, a double monastery in the diocese of Stockholm, patronized by King Magnus IV and Queen Blanche of Sweden

• 1350, makes pilgrimage to Rome to receive authorization for her order, the Bridgettines, but has to wait there a couple decades because the Pope is in Avignon

• 1370, Pope Urban V authorizes her order

• 1374, dies never having returned to Sweden

• 1391, is canonized a saint

Philippe de Vitry

• ca. 1310s–1330s, is employed by Louis de Bourbon, Count of Clermont in various clerical, administrative, and diplomatic capacities — but his real talent is music, for which he is much celebrated throughout his life, though few of his compositions survive today (and none of his secular music)

• 1322, writes the landmark treatise on music theory Ars nova notandi from which the style of Western music particular to the 14th century gets its name, ars nova, or “new art”, marking everything that came before this era as antique; in the new style the different voices of polyphonic harmonies begin to have more rhythmic independence from each other, more individual character, as the plurality of the natural world begins to find expression in music, not unlike the visual naturalism that, with the likes of Giotto, begins to creep into painting; Vitry’s treatise introduces a new form of notation that allows and encourages these innovations

• 1327, his employer the Count becomes Duke of Bourbon

• 1340, enters the service of King Philippe VI, where he enjoys a very high social position

• 1346, serves as a diplomat at the siege of Aiguillon

• 1350, remains in royal employ when King Philippe VI dies and is succeeded by his son John II

• 1351, becomes bishop of Meaux (near Paris)

• 1361, dies in Paris

Guillaume de Machaut

• 1323–1346, serves as secretary to John I, Count of Luxembourg and King of Bohemia, until the king’s death at the Battle of Crécy, during which time (and henceforward) Machaut enjoys great celebrity as a musical composer and poet operating in the ars nova style, of which he is thought to be the greatest practitioner; he works both in sacred and secular music, which is something of a social innovation for the time, though he creates more often in a secular vein, obsessing over courtly love and updating the old troubadour tradition to the modern way

• 1330–1337, becomes canon of Verdun, then of Arras, then of Reims

• 1340, lives in Reims, relinquishing his other canonical posts

• 1346–, after the death of King John I, enters the employ of various noble and royal households, being much in demand for his artistic prowess and notoriety

• early 1360s, composes the Messe de Nostre Dame, probably for the Reims Cathedral, the earliest known mass authored by a single composer, a landmark in the personalization of sacred music

• ca. 1362–1365, writes the narrative poem Le Livre dou Voir Dit, about an idealized love affair with a nineteen-year-old female admirer of his, thought to be semi-autobiographical

• ca. 1369, writes the historical epic poem La Prise d’Alexandrie, celebrating King Peter I of Cyprus’s abortive Crusade against Alexandria in 1365 (a current event)

• 1370s, organizes and catalogues his own oeuvre, both of poetry and music, very conscious of the personal perspective of his art, a large factor in why so much of his work survives; writes the Prologue, a treatise on his poetry, categorizing it by genre, style, technique, etc.

• 1377, his death

Andrew Corsini, Bishop of Fiesole

• 1318, joins a Carmelite monastery at Florence after a sinful youth and practices extreme asceticism there

• 1328, is ordained a priest

• 1332, returns to Florence after studying at the University of Paris and then Avignon; becomes the prior of a convent

• 1349, is appointed by the Pope as bishop of Fiesole (near Florence), in which position he distinguishes himself in asceticism, peacemaking, and miracle-working

• 1373/1374, dies after having been warned ahead of time by a vision of the Blessed Virgin

• 1385, his relics are exhumed and found to be incorrupt

The Leaning Tower of Pisa

• 1319, the seventh floor of the the bell tower outside Pisa Cathedral is completed, construction having begun in 1173 when the foundation was first laid (poorly!)

• 1372, the belfry is completed atop the seventh floor, successfully joining a Gothic octave to a Romanesque heptad

Venetian–Genoese Wars

• 1350–1355, the War of the Straits; while half their populations die from plague, the Republics of Venice and Genoa battle for dominance of the Aegean, Marmara, and Black Seas (and the straits connecting them)

• 1378–1381, the War of Chioggia (coastal town in the environs of Venice), turning point in the rivalry between Venice and Genoa, after which the influence of Genoa begins to fade

St. Theodosius of Trnovo

• ca. 1325–1328, meets St. Gregory of Sinai when he arrives in Bulgaria and becomes his disciple at Paroria

• 1346, St. Gregory of Sinai dies

• 1350, founds Kelifarevo Monastery (near Trnovo), becoming the center of hesychastic renewal in Bulgaria

• 1360, retreats to a cave due to Turkish attacks

• 1363, dies in Constantinople, having traveled there to discuss a dispute between the Bulgarian church and the Patriarch of Constantinople Kallistos I, who would write his biography

St. Euthymius of Trnovo, Patriarch of Bulgaria

• ca. 1350, becomes a monk at Kelifarevo Monastery under St. Theodosius of Trnovo

• 1363, accompanies St. Theodosius to Constantinople and stays there after his death, at the Studion Monastery, later moving to Mt. Athos

• 1371, is ordered off Mt. Athos due to a Bulgarian–Ottoman alliance and is sent to the island of Lemnos; escapes to Trnovo instead where he founds a monastery and the linguistically very influential Trnovo Literary School

• 1375, is consecrated Patriarch of Bulgaria

• 1393, is entrusted with the defense of Trnovo at the time of an Ottoman siege that turns into a massacre; is exiled to Thrace where he dies some ten years later

Galicia–Volhynia Wars

• 1340, the King Yuri II Boleslav of Galicia–Volhynia is murdered, sparking a succession war between Poland and Lithuania over the territory

• 1344, a peace treaty is signed

• 1348–1353, fighting renews, then stalls again

• 1366, Poland renews the war and defeats Lithuania

• 1370, Polish King Casimir the Great dies, and Lithuania takes the opportunity to seize all Volhynia

• 1370–1387, Galicia is ruled by the Kingdom of Hungary

• 1381–1384, Lithuanian Civil War

• 1385, the Union of Krewo: Lithuanian Grand Duke Jogaila converts to Polish Catholicism (instead of Muscovite Orthodoxy) and becomes king of Poland

• 1389–1392, another Lithuanian Civil War, ending with the Ostrów Agreement, granting Galicia to Poland and Volhynia to Lithuania

St. Alexis, Metropolitan of Kiev and all Rus’ (at Moscow)

• ca. 1313, becomes a monk at Moscow

• ca. 1333, enters the obedience of Metropolitan Theognostus of Kiev and all Rus’ (residing at Moscow)

• 1340, is appointed the Metropolitan’s deputy at Vladimir

• 1352, is consecrated bishop of Vladimir

• 1353, the Black Death arrives in Moscow, killing the Grand Prince, his infant sons, and the Metropolitan Theognostus, but not before Alexis is sent to Constantinople to be made Theognostus’s successor

• 1354, at Constantinople, faces a challenger to the title of Metropolitan of Kiev and all Rus’ in the monk Romanus, put forward by the Grand Duke of Lithuania (whose metropolitanate seated at Halych in Galicia had been disestablished seven years prior) and boosted by anti-Palamites; the hesychastic Patriarch St. Philotheus appoints St. Alexis

• 1355, Emperor John V Palaiologos retakes Constantinople from his one-time regent Emperor John VI Kantakouzenos, and restores to the patriarchal throne St. Callistus I, who questions St. Alexis’s appointment and recalls him to Constantinople, where St. Alexis is imprisoned at the behest of the Grand Duke of Lithuania but escapes and returns to Moscow

• 1357, founds Andronikov Monastery in Moscow

• ca. 1357–1359, heals from blindness the wife of the Khan of the Golden Horde, forestalling an attack

• 1359, Grand Prince Ivan II dies, succeeded by his nine-year-old son Dmitri Donskoy, with St. Alexis as regent

• 1360s, founds the Chudov and Alekseyevsky monasteries

• 1364, St. Philotheus again succeeds St. Callistus I (dead the year before) as Patriarch of Constantinople

• 1367, construction of the Kremlin is completed at Moscow

• 1368–1372, the Lithuanian–Muscovite War

• 1376, St. Philotheus consecrates Bulgarian hesychast and long-time associate St. Cyprian as Metropolitan of Lithuania and names him successor to St. Alexis as sole Metropolitan of Kiev and all Rus’ — at the request of the pagan Grand Duke of Lithuania who rules over Tver and Smolensk and is rival to Moscow

• 1378, his death, sparking a succession crisis not resolved until 1390 (in favor of St. Cyprian)

St. Sergius of Radonezh

• 1321, at seven years old, meets a holy elder under a tree, who prays for him that he learn how to read, which he miraculously does

• 1337, is tonsured a monk, having already been living as a hermit in the forest outside Radonezh; founds Holy Trinity Monastery with his brother, starting with a simple wooden church

• ca. 1340, other monks begin gathering around him

• 1354, is ordained priest and made abbot

• 1355, institutes a charter for the building up of the monastery, which becomes the model used by his many disciples to build many other monasteries

• 1359, Dmitri Donskoy becomes Prince of Moscow at age nine, with Metropolitan St. Alexis as regent, who supports the work of St. Sergius and his disciples, building monasteries in remote, difficult places

• 1370, his nephew and disciple Fyodor founds Simonov Monastery at Moscow

• 1374, his disciple St. Athanasius the Elder founds Vysotsky Monastery near Serpukhov and is entrusted with the care of St. Nikon, St. Sergius’s eventual successor at Radonezh

• 1380, blesses Grand Prince Dmitri Donskoy before the Battle of Kulikovo only after all peaceful options are exhausted

• 1391, his death

St. Stefan Uroš V

• 1355, at age 19, succeeds his father Stefan Uroš IV Dušan as Emperor of the Serbs and Romans, inheriting the Serbian Empire at its peak

• 1356, loses his father’s gains in Thessaly, Aetolia, and Acarnania

• 1357, defeats Matthew Kantakouzenos and his Turkish army

• 1359, retakes Thessaly, Aetolia, and Acarnania

• 1365, nobleman Vukašin Mrnjavčević becomes co-ruler with Stefan Uroš V with the title king

• 1360s, as Ottomans conquer Bulgarian Thrace, Serbian forces suffer a major defeat as well

• 1371, September, much of the Serbian nobility, including co-ruler Vukašin Mrnjavčević, perishes by the hand of the Ottomans at the disastrous Battle of Maritsa

• 1371, December, dies childless, ending the Serbian Empire, yielding to multiple princes, St. Lazar being the most powerful leader

St. Nicodemus of Tismana

• 1330s–1340s, as a young man from Serbia, with family ties to Prince St. Lazar, he becomes a monk on Mt. Athos, learns the ways of hesychasm, and later becomes abbot of Hilandar Monastery

• ca. 1364, travels to Wallachia and founds Vodița Monastery, the first in Romania

• late 1360s, founds Tismana Monastery with ten other hesychasts and the patronage of St. Lazar, which becomes a massively influential spiritual center

• 1375, is made archimandrite

• 1399, begins a seven-year stay at Prislop Monastery in Transylvania before returning to Wallachia for the last year of his life

Henry Susa

• ca. 1307, becomes a Dominican novice at age 13 at Konstanz, Swabia, Holy Roman Empire

• ca. 1313, experiences a conversion to nuptial mysticism, being wedded to Eternal Wisdom

• ca. 1319–1321, studies philosophy and theology at Strasbourg

• 1324–1327, studies theology at Cologne, where he would have met Meister Eckhart and Johannes Tauler

• 1327, returns to his home priory at Konstanz and serves as lecturer, where he defends Meister Eckhart

• 1330, is accused of heresy by his order and travels to Maastricht to defend himself; he appears not to have been condemned but no longer lectures at Konstanz

• 1334–1337, writes the Horologium Sapientiae (Clock of Wisdom)

• 1339–1346, his community at Konstanz is exiled due to conflict between the pope and their emperor

• ca. 1348, is transferred to the monastery at Ulm, where he lives for the rest of his life

• 1361–1363, compiles his vernacular works in The Exemplar

• 1366, he dies, leaving behind many writings (including the autobiographical Life of the Servant), which manuscript evidence suggests are the most popular of the century

Johannes Tauler

• ca. 1318, enters the Dominican Order at his home town of Strasbourg in the Holy Roman Empire around age 18

• ca. 1326, studies at Cologne

• ca. 1330, begins his preaching career at Strasbourg, characterized by a neoplatonic mysticism likely influenced by Meister Eckhart (whom he probably met in Strasbourg and/or Cologne); his literary legacy consists only of sermons, eighty of them

• 1338/1339, when the Dominicans are exiled from Strasbourg for political reasons, Tauler goes to Basel, where he associates with the Friends of God, a brotherhood dedicated to mysticism that he mentions several times in his sermons

• ca. 1343, returns to Strasbourg

• 1346–1349, lives through an earthquake and the Black Death

• 1350s, travels a lot, preaching frequently in Cologne

• 1361, his death at Strasbourg

Ludolph of Saxony

• ca. 1310, joins the Dominicans in Saxony of the Holy Roman Empire

• 1340, pursues a stricter form of monasticism at the Carthusian monastery at Strasbourg

• 1343–1348, serves as prior of the Carthusian monastery at Koblenz on the Rhine before resigning to become again a simple monk

• 1348–1378, lives as a monk first at Mainz, then at Strasbourg

• 1374, completes his main written work Vita Christi, a summa evangelica very influential in Western forms of meditation

• 1378, his death

Catherine of Siena

• ca. 1353, at age 5 or 6 has first mystical vision of Christ

• 1367–1374, dedicates herself to serving the sick and imprisoned in Siena

• 1368, at age 21, undergoes a “mystical marriage with Jesus”

• 1374, begins traveling Italy advocating for moral reform

• 1375, begins dictating letters to influence politics

• 1376, travels to Avignon to influence Pope Gregory XI

• 1377–1378, dictates The Dialogue of Divine Providence while in ecstasy

• 1378, goes to Rome to stump for Pope Urban VI’s legitimacy amidst the Western Schism

• 1380, wasted away by extreme fasting, dies in Rome at age 33

John Twenge of Bridlington, Yorkshire

• ca. 1340, joins the Canons Regular of St. Augustine at Bridlington Priory after having previously completed his education at Oxford University

• 1346, becomes Canon of the Priory

• 1356, elected Prior but refuses out of humility

• 1361, re-elected Prior and accepts

• 1362, made Prior, in which capacity he serves with great distinction, working many miracles

• 1379, he dies, to be canonized 25 years later, the last English saint to be recognized before the Reformation

Gawain Poet

• ca. 1360s–1390s, an anonymous poet believed to be from Cheshire in northwest England writes Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and likely also the poems Pearl, Patience, and Cleanness

The Travels of Sir John Mandeville

• ca. 1357–1371, this book is written in the voice of a likely fictional author, a certain English knight John Mandeville, about his fantastic journeys eastward to the Middle East, India, and China beginning in 1332; the work gains tremendous popularity in the West; the earliest manuscript is in French and dates to 1371

Nicole Oresme

• 1342, is a regent master of arts at the University of Paris

• 1345–1348, his earliest writings date to this time, including pioneering work on psychology and perception

• 1348, studies theology at Paris

• 1355–1360, writes some of the earliest Medieval works on economics, claiming an individual’s right to property; also makes significant contributions to the field of mathematics, natural philosophy (anticipating evolutionary theory), and musicology

• 1356, receives his doctorate and is made grand master of the College of Navarre

• 1359, becomes secretary to the Dauphin Charles of France, with whom he has a lifelong friendship and liberalizing influence

• 1362, becomes master of theology and is appointed canon of the Cathedral of Rouen

• 1364, is appointed dean of the Cathedral of Rouen upon King Charles V’s ascent to the throne

• 1371–1377, receives a pension from the king to create the first vernacular translation of the works of Aristotle, also extensively annotating them, including the Ethics, Politics and Economics

• 1377, writes his cosmological work Livre du ciel et du monde (“Book of Heaven and Earth”) by request of the king, in which he anticipates the Copernican revolution

• 1377–1378, is consecrated bishop of Lisieux

• 1380, death of King Charles V of France; takes up residency in Lisieux

• 1382, his death

John Wycliffe

• 1351, is ordained a priest

• 1356, graduates Merton College and begins his academic career at Oxford

• 1370s, argues forcefully against papal claims, the validity of immoral priests and their sacraments, and the doctrine of transubstantiation, while arguing for the centrality of Scripture

• 1377, is censured by the Pope for advocating the royal divestment of all church properties

• 1381, the chancellor of Oxford pronounces some of his teachings heretical

• 1382, the Earthquake synod in London forbids his propositions

• 1382–1384, first versions of a Middle English translation of the Bible from the Latin Vulgate appear, attributed to Wycliffe, though the degree of his involvement is uncertain

• 1384, he dies, to be condemned as a heretic by the Council of Constance thirty years later, confirmed by the Pope

The Caroline War

• 1369–1389, second phase of The Hundred Years’ War between England and France

• 1381, the Peasants’ Revolt in England limits how much the crown is able to tax for military expenses going forward

Geoffrey Chaucer

• 1367–1374, serves as a valet in the royal court of Edward III, in which capacity he travels a lot in Europe

• 1368, writes his first major work, The Book of the Duchess

• 1374–1386, serves as comptroller of the customs for the port of London, to which time a majority of his written works are dated

• 1380, translates Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy into English

• 1387, begins writing The Canterbury Tales, which he continues until his death

• 1391, writes A Treatise on the Astrolabe, the first example of technical writing in English

• 1400, his death

Julian of Norwich

• 1373, a thirty-year-old woman living in Norwich, England (possibly already an anchoress), she falls deathly ill and has a series of visions of Christ’s Passion that upon recovery she writes about in her Revelations of Divine Love (a title not given to the work until centuries later); it is the earliest known work in English by a woman

• 1390s, if not before, she is probably living as an anchoress in Norwich by this point, and her longer, revised version of Revelations may date to this time

Dorothea of Montau

• ca. 1364, at age 17, daughter of a wealthy farmer, she marries an abusive old swordsmith in Danzig (in the State of the Teutonic Order) and immediately begins having ecstatic visions

• 1360s–1370s, converts her brutal husband through her humility; they make many pilgrimages to holy places in the Holy Roman Empire and have nine children, five surviving infancy

• 1383, four of her five surviving children die in a plague, the fifth eventually becoming a Benedictine nun

• 1389/1390, due to illness, her husband stays back from a pilgrimage to Rome, which she goes on alone with his blessing; he dies while she’s away

• 1391, moves to Marienwerder (Kwidzyn) south of Danzig, still under the Teutonic Order

• 1393, establishes an anchoress’s cell in the Marienwerder cathedral, where she lives in asceticism and has visions

• 1394, her death; her deacon confessor writes her life in Latin and German, and she is revered locally

Peter Parler

• ca. 1351, serves as an apprentice to his father, the master builder Heinrich Parler, in the construction of a Gothic church at Schwäbisch Gmünd in the Holy Roman Empire

• ca. 1353, joins his father in Nuremburg, working on the church there as foreman; the earliest sculptures attributed to Peter are found here

• 1356, at age 23 is commissioned by Emperor Charles IV to take over construction of St. Vitus Cathedral at Prague, to be the most prestigious building in the Empire’s new capital, which had been started in 1344 and had been previously headed by Matthias of Arras from 1348 to his death in 1352

• 1357, is commissioned to build the Charles Bridge across the Vltava River at Prague

• 1360–1398, is commissioned to build many projects in Prague and surrounding area

• 1398, his son Johann takes over as master builder of the St. Vitus Cathedral

• 1399, his death

St. Cyprian, Metropolitan of Kiev and all Rus’ (at Moscow)

• ca. 1350, becomes a monk at Kelifarevo Monastery under St. Theodosius of Trnovo, some time later moving to Studion Monastery in Constantinople

• 1354–1364, moves to Mt. Athos along with St. Philotheus Patriarch of Constantinople upon the latter’s exile, and there produces many written works making hesychasm known in Slavonic

• 1368–1375, helps restore communion between churches of Constantinople, Serbia, and Bulgaria

• 1376, is consecrated by St. Philotheus as Metropolitan of Lithuania, to be seated at Kiev, and named successor to St. Alexis of Moscow as sole Metropolitan of Kiev and all Rus’ — at the request of the pagan prince of Lithuania who rules over Tver and Smolensk and is rival to Moscow

• 1378, upon the death of St. Alexis of Moscow, travels to Moscow to be installed there, but Grand Prince Dmitri Donskoy detains him in suspicion and sends him back to Kiev

• 1379–1380, Dmitri Donskoy sends an anti-monastic priest to Constantinople to be consecrated as St. Alexis’s successor, but he dies just before arriving, and his party puts forward their member Archimandrite Poemen as the Grand Prince’s candidate instead; Poemen is consecrated the same position St. Cyprian was meant for and is sent back to Moscow, angering Dmitri Donskoy because that’s not who he sent to be consecrated

• 1380, the Battle of Kulikovo, a Muscovite victory over the Mongols, marks a shift in power in the region, one St. Cyprian helps arrange by keeping the Lithuanians from supporting the Mongols

• 1381, is forgiven by Dmitri Donskoy and welcomed into Moscow as Metropolitan, with Poemen imprisoned

• 1382, Mongols attack again, causing St. Cyprian to take refuge in Tver, angering Dmitri Donskoy; also the Patriarch excommunicates Dmitri Donskoy for not accepting Poemen, for which Dmitri Donskoy again blames St. Cyprian, whom he sends packing (to Kiev) in favor of rehabilitating Poemen

• 1384, Poemen’s blameworthy behavior causes him to be deposed by the Grand Prince, who appeals to the Patriarch of Constantinople, who opens an investigation

• 1384–1385, the Patriarch of Constantinople sends St. Dionysius, archbishop of Suzdal, with two metropolitan bishops, to Moscow to be made the new metropolitan at Moscow, but St. Dionysius is detained at Kiev along the way by the Lithuanian prince of Kiev, and dies in custody

• 1385, both Poemen and St. Cyprian travel to Constantinople to plead their cases, but the Patriarch drags his feet for years

• 1389, Poemen is deposed, and St. Cyprian is formally recognized at Constantinople as Metropolitan of Kiev and all Rus’; Dmitri Donskoy dies, succeeded by his son Vasily I

• 1390, is finally installed at Moscow as Metropolitan of Kiev and remains so for the last seventeen years of his life, establishing hesychastic teaching there; starts writing the Book of Degrees, which traces the lineages of Russian royalty

Theophanes the Greek

• before 1370, paints church frescoes in Constantinople, Chalcedon, Galata, and Kaffa

• 1370, emigrates to Novgorod from Constantinople, bringing the hesychastic artistic tradition with him, painting frescoes and icons and illuminating manuscripts

• early 1390s, moves to Moscow; continues painting there, training a new generation

Tsar St. Lazar, Prince of Serbia

• 1345, at age 16, is placed in the court and at the royal table of Stefan Dušan, King of Serbia

• 1346, Stefan Dušan is crowned Emperor of the Serbs and Romans; the Serbian patriarchate is established

• 1352, Emperor Stefan Dušan along with the Serbian Patriarch are anathematized by the Patriarch of Constantinople

• 1353, at age 24, marries Princess St. Milica Nemanjić and is raised to the rank of Prince

• 1355, Emperor Stefan Dušan dies, succeeded by St. Stefan Uroš V, who can’t rule well Serbia’s vast territory, which begins to break up; Prince Lazar remains in the royal court and rules an area in southern Serbia around the town Kruševac known as Moravian Serbia

• ca. 1364, leaves the royal court having never advanced in position there; still rules Moravian Serbia

• 1371, the Battle of Maritsa against the Ottomans wipes out much of Serbian nobility, and St. Stefan Uroš V dies later in the year, effectively ending the Serbian Empire

• ca. 1372, sends envoys to the other Serbian princes in attempt to reunite the kingdom; at a meeting in Bosnia, survives an assassination attempt; becomes popularly known as Tsar from around this time, though he never officially rises above the rank of Prince

• 1375, calls a national assembly of state and church leaders at Kruševac; by letter to the Patriarch of Constantinople, he wins forgiveness of the Serbian church and recognition of the patriarchate

• 1375–1377, builds Ravanica Monastery in central Serbia, which becomes a refuge for disciples of St. Gregory of Sinai fleeing from Mt. Athos due to the Ottomans, who teach St. Lazar the Jesus Prayer

• 1375–1378, builds the Lazarica Church at Kruševac

• 1379, takes Braničevo and Kučevo from the Hungarians, extending Moravian Serbia to its greatest size

• 1386, gives a daughter in marriage to the Emperor of Bulgaria

• 1387, rebels from Moravian Serbia’s vassal status to the Ottomans and gives the Ottomans their first military loss in the Balkans at the Battle of Pločnik, with assistance from King Tvrtko of Bosnia

• 1388, assists King Tvrtko of Bosnia in his victory over the Ottomans at the Battle of Bileća; Princess St. Milica endows the building of a women’s monastery at Ljubostinja not far from Kruševac

• 1389, the Battle of Kosovo, before which an angel gives St. Lazar a choice between the earthly kingdom or the heavenly kingdom, the earthly kingdom requiring nothing but that he charge into battle with this desire and he will be victorious, the heavenly kingdom requiring he build a church on the field of Kosovo with his own blood, which he chooses; his troops are slaughtered and scattered; but the Ottomans are turned back and the powerful sultan who has been conquering the Balkans is slain; henceforward this sacrifice defines the Serbian Orthodox people

• 1390–1391, upon a solemn burial service at Ravanica, St. Lazar’s body is discovered to be incorrupt, exuding fragrant myrrh, and glowing with uncreated light

St. Stephen of Perm

• 1370, while yet a priestmonk at a monastery in Rostov, creates an alphabet for the Komi (Zyrian) language of Perm in northeastern Russia

• 1376, beings voyaging along the Vychegda and Vym Rivers, visiting Komi peoples, learning their culture and preaching in their language, building churches and toppling idols

• 1383, is consecrated bishop of Perm by Metropolitan Poemen of Kiev and all Rus’ (at Moscow) during his brief disputed reign

• 1385, Archbishop Alexei of Novgorod, threatened by the loss of tribute, sends an army against St. Stephen in Perm, but it is thwarted

• 1386, St. Stephen visits Novgorod and attains their acknowledgment; henceforward Perm’s tribute goes to Moscow, greatly expanding that principality’s power

• 1390, his consecration is honored by St. Cyprian upon replacing Poemen as Metropolitan (along with all ordinations performed by Poemen)

• 1396, sensing his impending death, he prepares his flock, then journeys back to Moscow to die

Western Schism

• 1378, after the death of Pope Gregory XI (who ended the Avignon papacy), the mostly French college of cardinals elect two different popes: one in Rome on April 8, Urban VI, a Neapolitan archbishop meant to be a compromise with a Roman mob demanding a Roman pope; and, after great dissatisfaction with their choice, a second one on September 20, a Genevois cardinal, Clement VII, who is to take up residence back in Avignon; a schism results, causing great turmoil which is not resolved until 1417

Halley’s Comet

• 1378, returns and is visible from 26 September to 11 October (having last been seen in 1301–1302)

Battle of Kulikovo

• 1380, Grand Prince Dmitri Donskoy of Moscow, with the blessing of St. Sergius of Radonezh, defeats the Golden Horde in battle, marking a turning point against Mongol domination in the region

St. Cyril of White Lake

• 1380, becomes a monk at Simonov Monastery in Moscow

• 1387, becomes archimandrite of the monastery, fleeing not long after for the wilderness at White Lake where the next century he is to become a very holy elder with many disciples

Nikola Tavelić and companions

• 1365, becomes a Franciscan friar at Bribir, Croatia

• 1383, moves to Jerusalem to serve in the Custody of the Holy Land and to witness to the faith among the Muslim Arabs

• 1391, seeing no missionary fruit from quiet labor, he preaches boldly to Muslims at a public gathering, is arrested, refuses to convert, and is executed along with his fellow friars, their remains destroyed (making him the earliest Croatian saint)

John of Nepomuk, Bohemia

• 1383–1387, studies canon law at the University of Padua after first studying at Prague

• 1393, becomes the vicar-general of the St. Giles Cathedral at Prague, in which capacity he hears the confession of the queen; King Wenceslaus IV, suspecting infidelity of the queen, tortures and drowns John in the River Vltava for not revealing her confession to him — so the legend goes, disputed by Jesuits

Kiev Psalter of 1397

• 1397, the famous Psalter featuring over 300 miniature illustrations is produced by Archdeacon Spiridon in Kiev, commissioned by a Bishop Michael, both of whom were from Moscow

Jan Hus

• 1398, begins teaching at the University of Prague

• 1399, publicly defends the teaching of John Wycliffe

• 1400, is ordained a priest

Ottoman Conquest of the Balkans

• 1352, while allied with Emperor John VI Kantakouzenos, the Ottomans win their first battle in Europe, against John V Palaiologos and his Serbian allies; they invade and seize a fortress on Gallipoli peninsula, their first in the Balkans

• 1354, Ottomans conquer Gallipoli peninsula, taking advantage of an earthquake heavily damaging the region, and from there proceed to conquer southern Thrace

• 1360, Ottomans conquer a strip of Thrace reaching the Black Sea, cutting off the land routes from Constantinople to the rest of Europe

• 1360s, Ottomans, under their new sultan Murad I, take the Bulgarian walled city of Adrianople (since known as Edirne), which becomes their new capital

• 1371, at the Battle of Maritsa, Ottomans wipe out much of Serbian nobility, effectively ending the Serbian Empire (qua empire), once Emperor St. Stefan Uroš V dies months later and the Serbian principalities begin to operate separately from each other

• 1372, Ottomans conquer Macedonia north of Thessalonica; Serbian principalities of Priled and Velbazhd become vassals

• 1373, the Roman Emperor at Constantinople and the Bulgarian Emperor at Trnovo become vassals of the Ottomans

• 1381, Ottomans and Bulgarians begin to war with each other

• 1382, Ottomans conquer Sofia

• 1383–1387, siege of Thessalonica, resulting in Ottoman conquest

• 1387, Prince St. Lazar of Moravian Serbia rebels from his vassal status and deals the Ottomans their first loss in the Balkans at the Battle of Pločnik

• 1388, Ottomans conquer a large portion of Bulgaria; they lose a battle in Bosnia at Bileća

• 1389, Prince St. Lazar sacrifices himself at the Battle of Kosovo, thwarting the Ottomans and killing Sultan Murad I, despite tremendous losses

• 1390, Moravian Serbia becomes a vassal of the Ottomans

• 1393, the fall of Trnovo and much of Bulgaria, with the Bulgarian emperor falling back to Nicopolis

• 1394, Roman Emperor Manuel II rebels and Ottomans begin a nine-year blockade of Constantinople; Ottomans conquer Thessaly

• 1394–1395, Wallachian Voivode Mircea I defeats Ottomans at the Battles of Karanovasa and Rovine, but has to retreat to Hungary, and his pro-Ottoman successor becomes a vassal

• 1395, the city of Nicopolis falls, and the Bulgarian emperor is slain

• 1396, the Battle of Nicopolis: a Hungarian-led Crusade drawing soldiers from much of Western Europe (with many Balkan allies) stumbles and is thwarted by the Ottomans (with their many Balkan vassals), many being captured and slaughtered; the Ottomans, however, cease European expansion and focus on the ongoing blockade of Constantinople

Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos

• 1365–1370, given the title Despot by his father Emperor John V Palaiologos and sent west to solicit for help defending Constantinople

• 1369, made governor of Thessalonica

• 1373, his older brother Andronikos IV, co-emperor since 1352, unsuccessfully revolts against their father, causing Manuel to be named heir to the imperial throne

• 1376–1379, is temporarily dethroned along with his father by his elder brother Andronikos IV

• 1390, is temporarily dethroned along with his father by his nephew John VII, son of Andronikos IV; also, is taken hostage by the Ottoman Sultan as leverage against his father and is made, along with John VII, to help conquer Philadelphia, the lone Roman holdout in western Asia Minor, a profound humiliation

• 1391, flees to Constantinople upon the death of his father in order to prevent his nephew from taking power

• ca. 1391, says in dialogue with a Persian Muslim scholar, “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”

• 1392, marries a Serbian princess (also a Turkish vassal) and is crowned emperor

• 1393, after putting down an insurrection in Bulgaria, the Ottoman sultan threatens to kill all his Christian vassals, convincing Manuel that help will be needed from the West

• 1394–1402, the Ottomans blockade Constantinople (ended only by their defeat by Timur at Ankara)

• 1396, sends ten ships to aid the fated Nicopolis Crusade

• 1398, receives in aid six ships with 1,200 men from the Kingdom of France

• 1399, travels abroad at the end of the year in search of military assistance, leaving his family in the Peloponnese

• 1400, sails with a retinue to Italy, visiting Venice, Padua, Vicenza, Pavia, as well as the recently created Duchy of Milan; then, meets and stays with the King of France at Charenton near Paris; finally, crosses the Channel and spends two whole months in the court of the King of England, the first Roman Emperor to have been in Britain since the time of St. Constantine, praying church services in Greek regularly and with all confidence, no man forbidding him.

The Holy Dormition of the Mother of God, icon by Theophanes the Greek, 1392.