Events
January–December
- February 20 – Orkney and Shetland are returned by Norway to Scotland, as a result of a defaulted dowry payment.[1]
- March 4 – A mount of piety is established in Siena (Italy), origin of Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, the world's oldest surviving retail bank.[2]
- April 11 – The first printed edition of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy is published in Foligno.[3]
- June
- 20-year-old Leonardo da Vinci is admitted as a master in his own right to the artists' Guild of Saint Luke in Florence.[4]
- (approximate date) – Volterra, a town in Italy, is sacked by Florentine soldiers for challenging the power of Lorenzo de' Medici.
- July 3 – The Cathedral and Metropolitical Church of Saint Peter in York, England, commonly known as York Minster, is declared complete and consecrated.[5]
- December 31 – The city council of Amsterdam prohibits snowball fights: "Neymant en moet met sneecluyten werpen nocht maecht noch wijf noch manspersoon." ("No one shall throw with snowballs, neither men nor (unmarried) women.")
Undated
- The Kingdom of Fez is founded by the Wattasid dynasty with Sultan Abu Abd Allah al-Sheikh Muhammad ibn Yahya as its first ruler.[6]
- An extensive slave trade begins in modern Cameroon as the Portuguese sail up the Wouri River.
- Fernão do Po claims the central-African islands Bioko and Annobón for Portugal.
- Possible discovery of the island of "Bacalao" (perhaps Newfoundland off North America) by João Vaz Corte-Real.
- First printing of Thomas à Kempis' The Imitation of Christ (De Imitatione Christi) probably concludes posthumously in Augsburg;[7] it will reach 100 editions and translations by the end of the century.[8]
- Johannes de Sacrobosco's De sphaera mundi (written c. 1230) is first published in Ferrara, the first printed astronomical book.
- Pietro d'Abano's medical texts Conciliator differentiarum quae inter philosophos et medicos versantur and De venenis eorumque remediis (written before 1315) are first published.
