Possibly the worst year ever (among those documented). Temperatures drop by 1.5-2.5 degrees Celsius on average, ushering in the coldest decade of the last 2,300 years. Snow falls in summer in China. Crops are compromised, leading to terrible famines. In 541, bubonic plague arrives in the port of Pelusium in Egypt, part of the Eastern Roman Empire. In 536, a mysterious fog also spreads across the northern part of the globe. In 2018, a University of Maine study of Swiss glaciers found the cause was a series of cataclysmic eruptions in Iceland. Two more will follow in 540 and 547. This series of shocks will lead to economic stagnation that will last until 640.

Dionysius Exiguus calculated the date of Christ’s birth as December 25, 531 years earlier (previously the calendar referred to 284 AD: the first year of Diocletian’s reign).

Southern Arabia. The Jewish king Yusuf As’ar Yath’ar (also known as Nuwas and Masruq), having ascended to the throne the year before, unleashed a wave of persecution against the Christians of the city of Najran. Thousands died. The Christian ruler of Ethiopia, Ella Atsheba, responded immediately: he crossed the Red Sea and invaded the Jewish kingdom of Himyar, deposing Yusuf in 525. Thus ended the 150-year history of the Jewish kingdom of Himyar. Once he departed, Ella Atsheba left behind his faithful governor Sumuyafa Ashwa, who was overthrown by Abraham, who founded his own Christian kingdom, which survived until 570, the year of the Persian invasion of Arabia.

Africa. The Bantu populations from Nigeria and Cameroon spread across Africa, eventually becoming the dominant population on the entire African continent, relegating the hunter-gatherer Pygmies and the Khoisan to isolated pockets of territory.

King Clovis of the Franks (France and Germany) is baptized as a Catholic bishop in Reims

The Ostrogoths, led by Theodoric, attack Constantinople. They are then driven towards Italy, which they conquer in 493. Theodoric settles in Ravenna, where he rules for thirty years.

The barbarian general Odoacer is acclaimed king and Roman patrician, and governs Italy

Fall of the Western Roman Empire. Romulus Augustulus, the last Western Roman emperor, is deposed by Odoacer, king of the Heruli, who proclaims himself king of Italy. Odoacer was a mercenary leader of the Roman imperial army who had rebelled against the young emperor. After defeating General Orestes, the powerful officer and father of the emperor, at Piacenza, he had conquered Ravenna, the capital of the Western Empire since 402. Although Roman rule continued in the Eastern Empire, Odoacer’s coronation marked the end of the original Roman Empire, confined within the borders of Italy.

China. The Sui imperial dynasty created the Keju examinations, later refined by the Tang emperors. They gave China a compact, homogeneous, and competent state administration. They would become the Gaokao tests in modern China. The Keju also served as a social lift for the less wealthy classes.

Chaos floods the world:Berbers, Burgundians, Franks, Alemanni, Goths, Saxons, Vandals, Huns (Attila), Ostrogoths, Visigoths, etc. Fall of the Western Roman Empire, Odoacer king of Italy, Muhammad, Caliphates, Muslims invade North Africa-Turkey-Spain, Charlemagne, Carolingians, Defeat of the Lombards, Muslims in Southern Italy, Coffee in Arabia, Otto of Germany, Pope’s election subject to Emperor’s approval, William the Conqueror: Normandy, Britain (battle of Agincor), Southern Italy

Birth of the Christmas and Easter tradition

With the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the Eastern Roman Empire (later called the Byzantine Empire) will survive for another thousand years; the temporal power of the Church for another 1500 years.

The Vandals, this time coming from Africa, carry out the second sack of Rome

Modena. Attila’s Huns passed right past the city, sparing it. Legend has it that Saint Geminiano caused a fog to descend to hide Modena from the Huns.

Western Roman Emperor Aetius sends Pope Leo I to treat with Attila west of Milan; the Pope manages, with chests of gold, to convince Attila to retreat.

Attila’s Huns sack and destroy Aquileia, which will never be rebuilt, and invade Northern Italy; refugees from the destroyed Venetian cities take refuge in the lagoons and found the city of Venice.

Battle of the Catalan Fields or Chalen (Northern France) between Romans+Ostrogoths+Franks+Visigoths and Huns, 30,000 – 50,000 men are involved in battle for 24 hours, the Huns are defeated; Attila’s warriors are struck by smallpox; the Romans of Aetius and the Visigoths of Theodoric defeat the Huns of Attila who had previously plundered Thrace and had then signed an armistice with the Eastern Roman Empire; Aetius spares Attila’s life after the battle probably because he hopes to use him to keep the Visigoths at bay

Aetius, son of a Roman general, and former hostage to the Huns as a diplomatic exchange in 406, convinces various barbarian tribes to join him against the Huns.

Attila, leader of the Huns, invades Gaul with the Celts and Ostrogoths

Theodosius (Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire) dies; he is succeeded by Marcian.

The Huns invade Roman Greece and sack hundreds of cities including 60 fortified ones

Saxon attack on the Britons; Roman civilization finally collapses in the British Isles.

Attila absolute ruler of the Huns.

The Romans grant lands to the Huns in Hungary

Kingdom of the Vandals in Africa.

Nestorius is the Patriarch of Constantinople. He advocates the separation of the two natures of Christ: the divine and the human. The Nestorians spread first to Syria and then eastward, reaching China, where a Nestorian stele dating to the 8th century is located in Xian, and as far as Mongolia and Manchuria, where they converted some local princes.

Valentinian III is Roman Emperor

Vortigen rules much of southern England

John is Roman Emperor

Peace Treaty between the Romans and the Huns

Visigothic Kingdom of Toulouse

Ravenna Chancellery. A law is promulgated ordering the Jews, calling them a perverse people, to leave the army (Theodosian Code, 16, 8, 24). It is also known as the “Exclusion Law.”

The imperial order to arrest and execute Stilicho arrives in Ravenna. Stilicho attempts to take refuge in a church at night, but the next day, Honorius’s soldiers enter and swear before the bishop that Stilicho would be spared, only sentenced to prison. As proof, they present a letter from the Emperor, which they show to the general. This promise, however, is not kept. As Stilicho leaves the church, a second letter is read to him, ordering his execution. Heraclianus, commander of the garrison, takes charge of Stilicho and carries out the sentence, beheading the magister militum. Stilicho could have easily avoided the arrest and roused the troops loyal to him who accompanied him, who were merely waiting for a signal to intervene, but he does not do so, fearing the consequences such an action would have on the fate of the shaky Western Empire. Flavius Stilicho was of Vandal descent on his father’s side. He was a patrician, consul of the Western Roman Empire, and magister militum of the Roman army. He effectively exercised the regency of the western part of the Roman Empire from the death of Theodosius I, under the reign of Theodosius I’s young son, Honorius, but was unable to impose his authority on the Eastern Roman Empire. He led numerous military campaigns against the Barbarians and fought against the usurper Gildo in Africa. He repelled Alaric’s Visigoths and defeated Radagaisus’s Ostrogoths. However, to protect Italy, he left the Rhine frontiers unguarded, so much so that he was unable to stop the invasion of the Vandal and Alan armies. Finally, he failed to repress Constantine III’s usurpation in Gaul and Britain. During his reign, Stilicho pursued a policy consistent with that of Theodosius I: integrating the Barbarians into the army and society, and, in the religious sphere, promoting Nicene Christianity and opposing paganism and the Arian and Donatist heresies, thus attracting the hostility of the Roman elite. Upon his death, his troops sided with the Visigoths, who entered Italy to sack Rome.

Alaric invades Italy: the imperial capital is moved to Ravenna

It is reported that the cold is so intense that the Black Sea freezes over.

On the tomb of Geminiano, 50m south of the Via Claudia (now Via Emilia Centro), a first Christian temple was built, on the initiative of the bishop of Modena Theodore.

Augustine (later Saint Augustine) wrote Confessions. Among other things, he questioned the nature of time: “It is in my mind, then, that I measure time. I must not allow my mind to insist that time is something objective. When I measure time, I am measuring something in the present of my mind. Either this is time, or I do not know what it is.” This idea that time can exist only in the mind was declared heretical in 1277; nevertheless, it seems to have some basis in modern physics: in the intimate detail of physics, the variable of time disappears, leaving only the irreversible and non-commutative processes that give rise to the increase in entropy, which is relative to the observer (it measures the number of states that our blurred vision does not distinguish), and which generates our perception of (local) time.

Geminiano, bishop of Modena, dies

The oldest list corresponding to the current canon of the Christian Bible is first found in a letter of Athanasius of Alexandria in 367, in accordance with the subsequent decree of Pope Damasus in 382. This canon has prevailed to this day through the mediation of the Vulgate, the translation of the Bible into Latin made by St. Jerome at the commission of Pope Damasus. A generation later, at the papal councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397), the bishops and theologians formally canonized this list of recommendations which became the New Testament.

Alaric, commanding the Goths, plunders Greece

The Christian Emperor Theodosius declared Christianity the state religion and banned all other religions, whose rites and traditions did not disappear completely but were partially absorbed by Christianity (December 25th, which is the Christian Christmas, but also the birth of Mithras, the cult of the Virgin Mary which closely resembles the cult of Isis, the rite of baptism and the cult of John the Baptist, etc.).

The Visigoths plunder Greece and the Balkans

The Christian Emperor Theodosius orders Theophilus, Bishop of Alexandria, Egypt, to destroy all pagan monuments; the Library, being located inside the Temple of Serapis, was partially involved in the destruction.