Mantua. Guido Bonacolsi, old and ill, joins his brother Rainaldo Bonacolsi in his government. Rainaldo will become known in Modena as “Duke Passerino” due to his short stature, but his slender body and lively temperament. Another brother, Bonaventura, is fat, pale, and flabby, and is nicknamed Butirrone or Botirone.

The Black Death of the fourteenth century. It is recounted by Giovanni Boccaccio in the Decameron. It was first reported in China, in the Huabei region (the same area where the coronavirus originated in 2019). It was transmitted to humans from rodents via the Yersinia Pests virus. It spread along the Silk Roads and reached Crimea via the Genoese in 1347. In Europe, it caused between two hundred and four hundred million deaths. It was the second global pandemic in history.

Venice bit off more than it could chew and attempted to subjugate Ferrara, which was already subject to the Pope, both politically and commercially. But the Pope excommunicated Venice and issued a papal bull demanding the confiscation of their property and their enslavement wherever they were located. Obviously, the Pope did not have the army to enforce this bull, but Venice’s neighbors were thus encouraged to intervene, returning control of Ferrara to the Pope. Despite this misstep, Venice did not bow to the Pope and continued to control the mouth of the Po River. In 1313, the Pope revoked the bull.

In the newly formed Respublica mutinensis, amidst a climate of euphoria and celebration, the Campionesi brothers returned to work on the Ghirlandina tower, adding the spire and garlands. During this period, the pedra ringadora was also placed in the Piazza Grande. Modena was inhabited by 16,000 commoners, 1,500 magnates, and 13,000 foreigners, for a total of just over thirty thousand inhabitants.

Dante Alighieri writes the Divine Comedy

Monastic State of the Knights of Rhodes, on the island itself and on the neighboring islands. They are the Frates Hospitalis Sancti Johannis in Jerusalem, or Knights of St. John. They took refuge here after being expelled from the Levant: Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. They would resist Rhodes, uncomfortably close, practically surrounded, by the Ottoman Empire, for over two centuries.

Scottish nationalist William Wallace, who fought against the army of Edward I, was captured by the English and executed.

India. The second Mongol attempt to take Delhi ends badly for the attackers. The skulls of Mongols killed in battle are placed in the city’s new walls as a sign of intimidation against further attacks.

Flavio Gioia was the first to create a compass in Europe (it had already been invented centuries earlier by the Chinese)

In Rapa Nui, Easter Island, the local civilization, which arrived on the island only 100 years earlier, has extinguished all the available wood and is therefore in decline.

Without disappearing, leprosy regressed considerably in the West starting in the 14th century.

The Arabs introduced oranges (from China and Japan), lemons and grapefruits (from Northern India), mandarins (from China), and cedars (from Persia) to Europe.

The Mongol Empire stretches from Finland to Turkey to Baghdad to Pakistan to Java including China

The first eyeglasses are manufactured

Pope Boniface VIII grants a year of indulgence in light of the millions of pilgrims who flock to Rome; it is the first Jubilee of the Catholic Church; Rome has 20,000 inhabitants and hosts 2,000,000 pilgrims.

The gunpowder formula is introduced in Europe

Perpignan, southern France. Peasants’ debts were mostly to Jews. This was a typical situation in the rest of medieval Western Europe. Sixty-five percent of urban loan sharks’ debtors were peasants, 40% of whom took out loans in the autumn, when they married and paid their census to the lord, and 53% pledged to repay in August and September, at the time of the harvest and grape harvest.

At the beginning of the 14th century, very few cities had populations exceeding 100,000, and even then, only slightly. These cities are Milan and Venice. Paris has less than 80,000. London, Hamburg, Lübeck, Bruges, Ghent, and Toulouse have populations between 20,000 and 40,000.

Syria. Ilkhanid troops reach Damascus, now abandoned by the Mamluks.

Genoa suffers an incursion by the Venetian fleet, which only the previous year had been severely defeated at Curzola in Dalmatia. Domenico Schiavo, a Venetian pirate who had just survived the Curzola disaster, revives Venetian pride by boasting of having minted coins bearing the emblem of St. Mark on the breakwater of Genoa’s harbor.

William Wallace leads the Scottish revolt against the English and defeats King Edward I at Stirling

Bohemia mints the silver grosso, following in the footsteps of Venice and Florence.

Middle East. The Ilkhanid state, one of the four uluses of the Mongol Empire, officially adopts Islam.

The Swiss Confederation is born.

The people of the Uri Valley, the free community of the Schwyz Valley, and the association of the people of the lower Nidwalden Valley formed a perpetual league against the threat of the Habsburgs. At the time, it was difficult to foresee in this event the nucleus of the future Swiss nation, or Helvetic Confederation.

The entire Jewish community was expelled from England. The spark had been ignited in Lincoln a few years earlier, when Jews were blamed for the death of a nine-year-old boy. The story was then exaggerated by word of mouth. Nineteen Jews were tried and executed for it. And a series of vendettas and pogroms would follow for years throughout England. Finally, starting on October 12, 1290, the entire Jewish population (at most 2,000 people) was expelled from England. Hugh was buried in Lincoln Cathedral, and miracles were attributed to him in the centuries that followed. Only in 1955, ten years after the Holocaust, did Lincoln Cathedral repudiate the bloody defamation, placing a plaque acknowledging that the story of Jewish responsibility was fabricated and unsupported by any evidence, and that this had cost the lives of many innocent Jews. Some fake news lasts 700 years…

England. An order is issued to expel the entire Jewish community from England. It will be implemented starting October 12 of the same year. The spark had been ignited in Lincoln, a few years earlier, when Jews were blamed for the death of a 9-year-old boy. The story is then exaggerated by word of mouth. Nineteen Jews are tried and executed for it. And a series of vendettas and pogroms will follow for years throughout England. Finally, starting October 12, 1290, the entire Jewish population (at most 2,000 people) is expelled from England. Hugh is buried in Lincoln Cathedral, and miracles are attributed to him in the centuries that follow. Only in 1955, ten years after the Holocaust, did Lincoln Cathedral repudiate the bloody defamation, placing a plaque acknowledging that the story of Jewish responsibility was fabricated and unsupported by any evidence, and that this cost the lives of many innocent Jews. Some fake news stories last 700 years…

Obizzo d’Este was invited to Modena by the Modena magnates to put an end to the long-standing conflicts and wars between the intrines (families within the walls) and the extrinsics (families driven out into the countryside where they had often built fortifications). On January 23, 1290, construction began on a castle, which would form the basis of the current Ducal Palace.

Modena governed by the Empire, the Pope, the Este family, the Medici, the Este family, the Spanish, the French, the Austrians

In 1288, the free commune of Modena, due to internal strife among local noble families, renounced its municipal freedom and surrendered to Obizzo II d’Este, Marquis of Ferrara. A year later, Reggio also offered itself to Obizzo II, who thus became lord of these two provinces as a feudal lord of the emperor, while Ferrara was under the Pope.

Kingdom of Pagan (present-day Myanmar/Burma). On their third attempt, the Mongols, under the command of Esen Temur, managed to conquer the kingdom of Pagan and occupy its capital.

Kingdom of Annam (present-day Vietnam). Even at their second attempt, the Mongols failed to overpower the kingdom of Annam, which nevertheless decided to accept formal Mongol suzerainty and pay tribute.

Middle East, Mamluk Kingdom. Qalawun succeeds Sultan Baybars and continues his fierce policy against the Mongols and Crusaders.

Marco Polo’s First Voyage

Crusader Knights recover the Holy Shroud stolen by traitors at the court of King Louis IX of France, the Holy King