The Longman Companion to Renaissance Europe, 1390-1530

Stella Fletcher

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781138165328
• eBook ISBN: 9781317885610
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Early Modern History
• Index: History

This new Companion is the ideal reference guide. It fills a gap by providing an authoritative but accessible reference on political, economic, religious, social, as well as cultural developments in this crucial period. It contains information on all major topics including the church, war and diplomacy, civic life, learning and letters, printing, the economy, science and technology, the arts, across Europe and the wider world.

1
Chronology of public events, 1378–1534

The emphasis in this general chronology is on politics and inter-state relations. Intellectual life, the visual arts and extra-European exploration are among the themes treated chronologically elsewhere in this volume.

1378

8 Apr.: Election of Bartolomeo Prignano as Urban VI.

June-Aug.: Revolt of the Ciompi: Florentine wool workers reacted to the economic impact of war with the papacy (War of the Eight Saints) and demanded their own guilds, which they enjoyed for a short while.

9 Aug.: French cardinals at Anagni declared Urban’s election invalid.

20 Sept.: Election of Robert of Geneva as antipope Clement VII by rebel cardinals at Fondi created a papal schism.

29 Nov.: Death of Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV.

1381

June-July: Peasants’ Revolt in England.

Aug.: Conclusion of the three-year War of Chioggia against Genoa left Venice as the dominant naval power in the Mediterranean.

1384

Florentine conquest of Arezzo.

20 Aug.: Death of Geert Groote, founder of the quasi-monastic Brethren of the Common Life at Deventer and the spiritual revival known as the Devotio moderna (modern devotion), with both of which Erasmus was later associated.

31 Dec.: Death of Oxford philosopher and theologian John Wycliffe, whose attacks on ecclesiastical authority and the doctrine of transubstantiation were condemned by the Church, but inspired English Lollards and Bohemian Hussites.

1385

Ottoman conquest of Sofia.

14 Aug.: Portuguese victory at the battle of Aljubarrota ensured their independence from Castile.

1386

18 Feb.: Marriage of Włacłyslaw Jagiello of Lithuania, who converted from paganism to Christianity, and Jadwiga of Poland resulted in the creation of a united Poland-Lithuania, though formal union did not occur until 1401.

May: Giangaleazzo Visconti’s coup against his uncle Bernabó, lord of Milan, secured him the entire Visconti inheritance.

1387

War between the khan of the Golden Horde and the Mongol ruler Timur (Tamerlane, d. 1405) until 1396.

9 Apr Ottoman conquest of Salónica, the second largest city of what remained of the Byzantine empire.

1388

19 Aug.: Scots defeated the English at the battle of Otterburn.

27 Aug.: Ottomans defeated at Ploshnik by Bosnians allied with Serbia and Bulgaria.

1389

Feb.: Building on Scandinavian fears of German dominance in the region, Margrete of Denmark conquered Sweden and thereby engineered the union of the crowns of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, embodied in the 1397 Union of Kalmar.

15 June: Sultan Murâd I assassinated on the morning of the first battle of Kosovo, in which the Serbians and their allies were massacred, a victory which confirmed Ottoman rule in the Balkans while leaving Constantinople even more isolated.

15 Oct.: Death of the Roman pope Urban VI.

2 Nov.: election of Pietro Tomacelli as Boniface IX.

1390

For four months from Apr., John VII Palaeologos reigned as Byzantine emperor in defiance of his grandfather John V, but with the support of Sultan Bâyezîd. Florentine acquisition of Montepulciano. Outbreak of war between republican Florence and Gian Galeazzo Visconti’s Milan, the latter being in expansionist mode; Hans Baron (d. 1988) interpreted this conflict, which lasted until 1402, as a war for the defence of liberty against a tyrannical regime, a Florentine David versus a Milanese Goliath.

1392

League of Bologna formed by Florence, Padua, Ferrara, Mantua and Bologna in an attempt to halt Milanese expansion.

5 Aug.: Charles VI of France suffered his first bout of mental incapacity, after which his uncle Philip the Bold, duke of Burgundy, became the dominant figure in French political life until 1400, when civil war erupted between rival noble factions.

1393

Danubian Bulgaria annexed by the Ottomans.

1394

Sept.: Beginning of the Ottoman land blockade of Constantinople which lasted until 1402, but which Venetians were able to break by sea.

16 Sept.: Death of the Avignonese antipope Clement VII.

28 Sept.: Election of Pedro de Luna as Benedict XIII, the second antipope at Avignon.

1395

Gian Galeazzo Visconti of Milan purchased the title of duke from Emperor Wenceslas.

1396

9 Mar.: Twenty-eight years’ truce signed at Leulinghen between England and France, under which no further hostilities occurred until 1403, and Charles VTs daughter Isabel married Richard II of England.

25 Sept.: Battle of Nicopolis in Bulgaria, in which the Christian forces of Sigismund of Hungary, Venice and France were led by John the Fearless, future duke of Burgundy, to a decisive defeat at Ottoman hands; Burgundian leadership and financing of this ‘crusade of Nicopolis’ increased the international standing of these semi-detached French dukes; Sigismund escaped unscathed.

25 Oct.: Charles VI of France became overlord of Genoa until 1409.

1397

20 July: Union of Kalmar formally united the crowns of Denmark, Norway and Sweden.

1 Oct.: Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici transferred his main banking office from Rome to Florence, thereby founding the Medici Bank as generally understood.

1398

French obedience to the Avignonese antipope withdrawn, leaving the kingdom with allegiance to neither claimant until 1403.

Sept.: Henry Bolingbroke, duke of Hereford, and Thomas Mowbray, duke of Norfolk banished by Richard II as a result of a dispute between them.

1399

5 Aug.: Lithuanians defeated by Mongols at the River Vorskla.

29–30 Sept.: Deposition of Richard II and Bolingbroke’s succession as Henry IV of England.

10 Dec.: After fighting through the Ottoman blockade of Constantinople, Jean le Meignre, the ‘worthy’ Marshal Boucicaut (1365–1421), began the return journey to the West, joined by the Byzantine emperor Manuel II Palaeologus; Manuel’s nephew and co-emperor John VII was left in command in Constantinople.

1400

In the course of continued Milanese expansion, Perugia accepted Gian Galeazzo Visconti as its signore. Beginning of a campaign by Louis, duke of Orléans, to acquire greater power in France, taking advantage of Charles VI’s periodic mental incapacity.

14 Feb.: Richard II murdered at Berkeley Castle.

Apr.: Manuel II’s arrival in Venice, from where he travelled to Milan, reaching Paris by June and London in Sept., seeking support for beleaguered Byzantium.

21 Aug.: Disputed election of Rupert of the Palatinate to replace Emperor Wenceslas; the votes came from the three ecclesiastical electors and Rupert himself in a move opposed by the other three imperial electors.

From Sept.: The Welsh under Owain Glyn Dŵr repeatedly revolted against English rule until 1410.

Oct.: Paolo Guinigi effectively became signore of otherwise republican Lucca.

1401

18 Jan.: Formal union of Poland and Lithuania under a single crown.

Sept.: The army of Rupert of the Palatinate, king of the Romans and uncrowned Holy Roman Emperor, descended into Italy in traditional imperial fashion, only to be repulsed by a Milanese victory near Brescia (21 Oct.) and retreat back over the mountains in Apr. 1402.

1402

26 June: Significant Milanese victory over Florence at Casalecchio, leading to the submission ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of genealogical tables
• Preface
• 1 Chronology of public events, 1378–1534
• 2 Popes
• 3 Holy Roman Empire
• 4 Heads of states and dynasties
• 5 Genealogical tables
• 6 Courts and households
• 7 Republican government
• 8 Urban life
• 9 Population
• 10 Money and commerce
• 11 Warfare
• 12 Church and churchmen
• 13 Glossary of terms relating to literary culture
• 14 Education
• 15 Letters and lives
• 16 Libraries
• 17 Printing
• 18 Science
• 19 Music and musicians
• 20 Chronologies of the visual arts
• 21 Glossary of terms relating to the visual arts
• 22 Plans and designs
• 23 Discovery and the world beyond Europe
• 24 Maps and city plans
• 25 Bibliography
• Index