1307
Dante begins the Divine Comedy in exile
Wandering the courts of Verona and Ravenna, Dante Alighieri set out to write a hundred-canto poem describing a pilgrimage through hell, purgatory, and heaven, in Tuscan vernacular rather than Latin. It would rescue Italian as a literary language, map the medieval cosmos in terza rima, and scorch Dante's personal enemies for all eternity in rhyming tercets.
Templars arrested across France at dawn
On Friday the thirteenth, Philip IV's agents simultaneously seized every Templar they could find in a coordinated sweep across the kingdom. Tortured in Paris dungeons, the knights confessed to sodomy, idol worship, spitting on the cross. The charges were mostly invention. The purpose was the Order's vast treasury and the king's spiraling debts.
Edward I dies at Burgh by Sands
Riding north once more to crush the Scots, the old king collapsed within sight of the Solway Firth. He had asked that his bones be carried at the head of any army invading Scotland, a request his weak son would ignore. Edward II buried him at Westminster and turned back from the Scottish border, with disastrous consequences for English ambitions.
Marco Polo dictates the Travels from a Genoese cell
The Venetian merchant, captured at Curzola and sharing a cell with the romancer Rustichello da Pisa, narrated his improbable years at the court of Kublai Khan. Book of the Marvels of the World went into manuscript circulation. Europeans began to imagine Cathay as a place not of legend but of geography.
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Frequently asked
What happened in the year 1307?
Saeculum lists 4 curated events from 1307. The most significant is Dante begins the Divine Comedy in exile: Wandering the courts of Verona and Ravenna, Dante Alighieri set out to write a hundred-canto poem describing a pilgrimage through hell, purgatory, and heaven…
What era was 1307 part of?
1307 falls within the Late Middle Ages (1301-1500). Plague, papal schism, and the seeds of nation-states.
Which regions saw notable events in 1307?
The curated events from 1307 span Europe.