MEDIEVAL EUROPE

677 CE

Medieval Europe - The Arabs attempt to conquer Constantinople but fail.

750 CE

Irish monks establish early-medieval art. The greatest surviving product of these monks is the Book of Kells, a Gospel book of decorative art.

800 CE

On Christmas Day, Charlemagne is crowned emperor by the pope in Rome. This event indicates an autonomous Western culture based on Western Christianity and Latin linguistics. Charlemagne establishes schools in all bishoprics and monasteries under his control.

1066 CE

William the Conqueror invades England and asserts his right to the English throne at the Battle of Hastings. The Norman Conquest fuses French and English cultures because William is both the King of England and the Duke of Normandy. The language of England evolves into Middle English with an English syntax and grammar and a heavily French vocabulary.

1168 CE

English scientist Robert Grosseteste translates Aristotle's Ethics and makes technological advances in optics, mathematics and astronomy. He dies in 1253 CE.

1187 CE

Muslims recapture Jerusalem, and the Third Crusade is ordered. It is led by German Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, French King Philip Augustus and English King Richard the Lionhearted. It is not successful.

1212 CE

Spain reconquers the Iberian peninsula from the Muslims in the name of Christianity.

1252 CE

The papacy approves the use of torture for religious disobedience, following Innocent III's brutal "inquisitions" against heresy (namely the Waldensian and Albigensian heretics).

1280 CE

Eyeglasses are invented and later improved in the late medieval period.

1328 CEThe last heir of the Capetian dynasty dies and is replaced by the first ruler of the Valois dynasty. Because the English kings are also descended from the Capetian line, England attempts to claim the French crown.

1358 CE

Economic hardship in France results in an uprising of the lower-class, called the "Jacquerie" (taken from the French peasant "Jacques Bonhomme"). The peasants burn castles, murder and rape their lords and lords' wives and take advantage of the political confusion in France by attempting to reform the governmental system. The revolt occurs during the king's captivity in England.

1429 CE

Joan of Arc, a peasant girl in France, seeks out the French leader and relates her divinely-inspired mission to drive the English out of France. She takes control of the French troops and liberates most of central France.

1454 CE

Italy is divided into five major regions: Venice, Milan, Florence, the Papal States and the southern kingdom of Naples.

1505 CE

Ivan the Great of Moscow extends the Russian border into the Byelorussian and the Ukrainian territories, before his death. Muscovian Russia is recognized as a major Eastern-oriented power in Europe.

1509 CE

Henry VIII succeeds his father, Henry VII, for the English crown.

IN DEPTH LOOK AT 1358 CE

Economic hardship in France results in an uprising of the lower-class, called the "Jacquerie" (taken from the French peasant "Jacques Bonhomme"). The peasants burn castles, murder and rape their lords and lords' wives and take advantage of the political confusion in France by attempting to reform the governmental system. The revolt occurs during the king's captivity in England.

JACQUERIE

The Jacquerie was a popular revolt in late medieval Europe by peasants that took place in northern France in the summer of 1358, during the Hundred Years' War. The revolt, which was violently suppressed after a few weeks of violence, centered in the Oise valley north of Paris. This rebellion became known as the Jacquerie because the nobles derided peasants as "Jacques" or "Jacques Bonhomme" for their padded surplice called "Jacque". Their revolutionary leader Guillaume Cale was referred to by the aristocratic chronicler Froissart as Jacques Bonhomme or Callet. The word Jacquerie became synonymous with peasant uprisings in general in both English and French.

THE UPRISING

This combination of problems set the stage for a brief series of bloody rebellions in northern France in 1358. The uprisings began in a village of St. L eu near the Oise river, where a group of peasants met in a cemetery to discuss their perception that the nobles had abandoned the King at Poitiers. "They shamed and despoiled the realm, and it would be a good thing to destroy them all.’ The account of the rising by the contemporary chronicler Jean le Bel includes a description of horrifying violence. According to him, peasants "killed a knight, put him on a spit, and roasted him with his wife and children looking on. After ten or twelve of them raped the lady, they wished to force feed them the roasted flesh of their father and husband and made them then die by a miserable death.”

The peasants involved in the rebellion seem to have lacked any real organization, instead rising up locally as an unstructured mass. It is speculated by Jean le Bel that evil governors and tax collectors spread the word of rebellion from village to village to inspire the peasants to rebel against the nobility. When asked as to the cause of their discontent they apparently replied that they were just doing what they had witnessed others doing.

CANADA’S PAST

Augusta Stowe, daughter of Emily, is the first woman to graduate from the Toronto Medical School. The Toronto Women's Suffrage Association replaces the Literary Club of 1876. It opened new doors for women in that time and let people know that women were part of it. They gained respect from it and approval. Women in our society today are more connected with schooling and careers thanks to the few women in the past that stood up for what they wanted .