Landmarks in time and deeds for novice Medievalists

300‑200 BCE the first translation of the Bible from Hebrew to Greek (the Septuagint, for the 70 scribes). 100‑200 CE First NT books (Paul's epistles) added to the Bible

312 Emperor Constantine legalizes Christianity in the Roman Empire.

315 Constantine moves imperial capital to Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey)

380 Emperor Theodosius makes Christianity the Roman state religion‑‑also oldest surviving Biblical MSS made in Egypt

400‑500 Germanic tribes raid Western Europe and threaten Rome

404 Jerome completes the first Latin translation of OT and NT (the Vulgate Bible).

476 Emperor Romulus Augustus dies; Odoacer, the Gaul, rules Rome

[Usual date for the start "Middle Ages" & end of Roman Empire; Eastern ends w/Turks conquer Constantinople in 1453]

480-900 Celtic-Roman England invaded by successive waves of Angles, Saxons, and Jutes from the Continent. Anglo-Saxon emerges as the common tongue of the "Heptarchies" (eight kingdoms), and orally composed Anglo-Saxon prose and poetry begins to be recorded by scribes in breaks between copying Latin liturgical books.

496 Clovis, King of the Franks adopts Roman Christianity

524 or 525 Boethius, a Christian Roman philosopher and author of Consolation of Philosophy (translated by Chaucer) executed by Theodoric, the Ostrogoth ruler of Rome and most of the rest of Italy after his murder of Odoacer

597 Pope Gregory sends missionaries to convert Britain

610 Mohammed founds Islam w/ completion of the Qu'‑ran

651 Publication of the Qu'‑ran

ca. 700 Anglo-Saxon's greatest works, including the anonymous Beowulf, and the Venerable Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People (completed 731, including the story of the illiterate cowherd Caedmon who composed the first recorded poem in Anglo-Saxon, "Caedmon's Hymn") Click here for the title page of the library's copy of a 1565 Elizabethan translation of Bede into Early Modern English.

631‑733 Islam conquers Arabia, Persia, North Africa, & Spain

733 Charles Martel's Franks defeat Arabs at Tours, ends Islam's Westward expansion

752 Pippin III elected King of Franks by barony

754 Pope Stephen anoints Pippin as king at Paris

756 Pippin III donates Papal States to the Papacy

768 Charlemagne King of Franks. By 805 Franks conquer Europe except Spain, Scandinavia, S. Italy, and E. Slavic states

[This begins the period called "Carolingian" because of the cultural domination of Charlemagne's court over Europe.]

782 Charlemagne invites Alcuin of York to come to his court from England and to help reform the copying of books of Christian doctrine. Alcuin helps invent modern punctuation, regularizes Latin spelling, and develops a new script (Carolingian miniscule) which for the first time uses capital letters to distinguish the beginnings of sentences, with the rest in the newly invented lower-case letters like these. Capitals for proper nouns were invented later, but as of C8, readers finally had help parsing the sentences instructing them in their faith.

ca. 787 Viking raids on Europe and British Isles

800 Charlemagne crowned Holy Roman Emperor

814 Charlemagne dies.

ca. 845‑900 Viking, Magyar, and Muslim invasions destroy the Carolingian empire.

[England is ruled by seven the Anglo‑Saxon kings of Wessex, Essex, Sussex, Kent, East Anglia, Mercia, and Northumbria.]

1066 William the Bastard defeats Harold II at Hastings and the English begin to speak and write Norman French. [This begins the decline of Old English in England until Anglo-Saxon syntax and vocabulary absorb Norman French to emerge as "Middle English," between Old and Modern English.]

1096‑1099 First Crusade, preached by Pope Urban II, conquers Jerusalem

1147‑1149 Second Crusade fails to take Damascus.

1052 Henry II marries Eleanor of Aquitaine‑‑the Empire incl. England, Anjou, Aquitaine, Normandy, Maine, & Touraine.

1170 Thomas a Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, killed by four of Henry II's knights; king does public penance and loses some power over clerics in England; Marie de France, Chretien de Troyes, and Andreas Capellanus writing in England and Fr.

1189‑92 Third Crusade fails to recover Jerusalem; Richard I captured in Vienna

1204 King John loses Normandy to the French; Henry I (FR) confiscates French estates of barons living in England; nobles must choose either English or French allegiance.

1215 John forced to sign Magna Carta placing royal power beneath English law, protecting commoners, rights to fair trial and due process (though mainly for the barons).

1216 Henry III king of England

1226 Henry III marries Eleanor of Provence who brings many relatives to England, where her husband enriches them; considerable anti‑French sentiment in chronicles

1244 English and French kings formally confiscate lands of barons w/mixed allegiances

1258‑65 Provisions of Oxford and Barons' War‑‑foreigners twice driven from England

1272‑1307 Edward I restores English military prowess.

1307 Edward I dies. Edward II considered weak by contemporaries

1327 Edward II murdered by Lord Mortimer, Queen Isabella's lover Lord Mortimer and Queen Isabella reign as regents over Edward III until 1330 when Edward III seizes government and executed Mortimer. Curiously, apart from a period of house arrest, Isabella appears not to have been punished.

1340? Geoffrey Chaucer born

1345 English children now taught English instead of French in grammar school

1348‑9 Bubonic plague reduces English population by about 20% or more.

1358 The Jacquerie or Peasants Revolt in Picardy and Champagne

1362 Chancellor opens Parliament in English for first time and Statute of Pleading requires all legal proceedings in English

1380 Peasants' Revolt in Auvergne and Midi (the "Jaquerie" or "revolt of the 'Jaques'," probably "revolt of the 'Joes'" in ModE)

1381 Peasants' Revolt in England (Wat Tyler and John Ball); Archbishop of Canterbury and London's Mayor killed; John of Gaunt's palace burned; Richard II (at 14) ends it

1399 Henry Bolinbroke (Henry IV) deposes Richard II

1400 Chaucer and Richard II die

1400-1500 (roughly) The Great Vowel Shift: Middle English vowel sounds shifted their positions to their Modern English positions, consonants like "gh" and "k" ceased to be sounded in words like "enough" and "knight," and the final "-e" went silent in words like "eye" and "white," causing Modern readers great difficulty in reading Middle English.

[Linguistic change increasingly cuts off English readers from their own literary past and renders its language strange to them, until John Dryden can actually publish and sell translations of Chaucer to the English along with translations of Ovid's Latin and Boccaccio's Italian (Fables Ancient and Modern, 1700), an early but profound "end of the English Middle Ages."]

1453‑85 the noble families of York and Lancaster dispute possession of the English throne (later called "Wars of the Roses"). Kings take the throne by battle after Henry VI (L), is defeated by Edward IV (Y), who is defeated by the earl of Warwick ("The Kingmaker") who puts Henry VI (L) on the throne, until Edward IV (Y) defeats Warwick's forces, captures Henry, and reigns until he dies of natural causes (a rarity!), at which time Edward's two young sons (the "Princes in the Tower") are captured and probably killed by Richard III (Y), who rules until killed on Bosworth Field by troops supporting Henry Tudor, later Henry VII, father of Henry VIII, Mary I, and Elizabeth I (AKA the Tudor Dynasty). During this era, Sir Thomas Malory, wrote the Morte Darthur (c. 1460-71, printed by William Caxton in 1485 on the eve of Henry Tudor's invasion).

[Some blame this series of wars upon "Bastard Feudalism," the modern historians' term for the degrading replacement of single lord-vassal relationships by relationships in which vassals form multiple feudal alliances to lords who fought each other, a culture that led to conflict and betrayal and the rise of skepticism about loyalty, a common "end of the English Middle Ages."]

1475 William Caxton introduces movable type printing to England.

[Mass vernacular English literacy begins to replace rare Latin literacy: another common "end of the English Middle Ages."]

1485 Caxton prints the Morte Darthur; Henry Tudor (Henry VII) deposes Richard III, joins York & Lancaster by marriage

[Political authority consolidated around London by the Tudor dynasty, which intentionally weakened or destroyed regional baronial rulers until the king was on longer "primus inter pares" or greatest among the great, but an uniquely privileged noble far above all others: yet another "end of the English Middle Ages."]

1492 Cristoforo Columbo

[English insularity begins to be replaced by colonialism: still another "end of the English Middle Ages."]

1529-1534 Henry VIII, seeking divorce from Catherine of Aragon (mother of Mary I) for her failure to produce a male heir, breaks with the Pope and the Roman Church. In May 1533, Archbishop of Canterbury Cranmer pronounces Henry's marriage invalid and Henry marries Anne Boleyn (other of Elizabeth I). Henry is excommunicated by the Pope, and Parliament passes the Acts of Submission of Clergy, Succession, and Supremacy, making the king head of the Christian Church in England.

[Continuing separation of English religious values from those of Continental Europe and beginning of imperialist conflicts between England and European colonizing Catholic states that emerged in France and Spain: yes, another "end of the English Middle Ages."]

1535-40 Archbishop Cranmer dissolves the monasteries of England, takes over their lands, sells them to political allies, and eliminates their libraries, dispersing or destroying many of England's Medieval manuscripts in Anglo-Saxon and Middle English. Only those recovered by antiquaries (early historians) survived, including the vast collection of Sir Robert Bruce Cotton, which, itself, burned in 1731, with the loss of or significant damage to 22% of its 958 volumes. Today, the surviving Cotton library manuscripts, along with those from the Harley and Sloan libraries, are the foundation of the British Library's early book collection.

[Loss of England's longest-enduring witnesses to pre-Conquest English culture, along with much of its Middle English heritage: more an "end of the artifacts of the English Middle Ages," but when the artifacts are gone, memory goes with them.]

1642-7 Puritan Parliamentary armies under Oliver Cromwell and others drive the king from his palace, defeat his army, and capture him, try him, and execute him (1649). Wherever they went, Parliamentary troops destroyed relics of Medieval Christianity which had survived the Reformation, including stained glass windows, altar or rood ("cross") screens, and of course, illuminated manuscript books (AKA "iconoclasm," the intentional destruction of divine images thought to be inducements to idolatry).

[Belief in the king's sacred authority replaced by rule by parliament whose power arises from the people and popularly held private property--the king is not "greater" than the Law: perhaps the last significant "end of the English Middle Ages," though countless customs and much of its language survive until this day.]