In The Year 1294
The First Essential Scary Truth
Pope Benedict XVI resigned from his role as the leader of the Catholic Church effective February 28, 2013. I awoke to several news alerts on my iPad and iPhone and to a blogosphere in full speculation mode. Why did Benedict resign? Does he really have a Nazi past? Was the Church molestation scandal too much to outlast? Perhaps ill health is the answer and frankly, why should anyone care in these enlightened, atheistic days anyway?
To understand why this particular bit of news is so huge lays in the act of Papal resignation itself; the last time the Pontiff resigned his post was in 1294 when Pope Celestine V abdicated to Pope Boniface VIII. The where’s and why fore’s of Celestine’s resignation aren’t clear. The commonly accepted story is he wanted to return to a life as an aesthetic religious hermit. This rationale is undermined by Boniface VIII’s summary arrest and imprisonment of his predecessor. (Celestine died 10 months later while in Papal Custody.)
Pope Benedict XVI’s once in a millennium act had me thinking about the year 1294 and what other ground breaking events happened that year. According to the Wikipedia, these were the major events of the year of somebody’s lord 1294:
- July 5 – Pope Celestine V succeeds Nicholas IV, becoming the 192nd pope.
- Autumn – In response to the actions of new royal administrators in north and west Wales, Madog ap Llywelyn leads a revolt against his English overlords.
- December 24 – Pope Boniface VIII succeeds Pope Celestine V, becoming the 193rd pope, after Celestine V abdicates the papacy on December 13, only five months after reluctantly accepting his surprise election on July 5, wishing to return to his life as an ascetic hermit.
- The death of Kublai Khan. By this time the separation of the four khanates of the Mongol Empire (the Chagatai Khanate in Central Asia, the Golden Horde in Russia, the Ilkhanate in Persia, and the Yuan Dynasty in China) had deepened.
- John Balliol, King of Scotland, decides to refuse King Edward I of England‘s demands for support in a planned invasion of France, the result being the negotiation of the Auld Alliance with France and Norway in the following year. These actions play a part in precipitating the Scottish Wars of Independence, which begin in 1296.
- Strata Florida Abbey is rebuilt; it had been destroyed some years earlier in King Edward I of England‘s conquest of Wales.
- Architect Arnolfo di Cambio designs the Florentine cathedral Santa Maria del Fiore, better known simply as Il Duomo. He also begins work on the Basilica di Santa Croce di Firenze, also in Florence.
- England and Portugal enter into the first iteration of the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance, the oldest alliance in the world still in force.
- Edward I of England and Philip the Fair of France declare war on each other. To finance this war, both kings lay taxes on the clergy. Pope Boniface VIII insists that kings gain papal consent of taxation of the clergy and forbids churchmen to pay taxes.
Pretty tame stuff for the Dark Ages, if you ask me. So after a bit more digging, I was able to find one more piece of history the Wikipedia missed out on: 1294 was also the year the Jews were expelled from Berne, Switzerland.
Quick note to the Jimmy Wales and the other folks at the Wikipedia: when listing the history of 2nd Millennium Europe by year, if you have any doubt, make sure you throw in one genocidal act against/expulsion of the Jews. You may not have the exact right location but you can pretty much guarantee it happened just a few miles down the road.
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