14th Century - Definition and Overview

(13th century - 14th century - 15th century - more centuries)

As a means of recording the passage of time, the 14th century was that century which lasted from 1301 to 1400.

Events

• The transition from the Medieval Warm Period to the Little Ice Age
• Beginning of the Ottoman Empire, early expansion into the Balkans
• The Avignon papacy transfers the seat of the Popes from Italy to France
• Black Death kills about one third of European population (1347 - 1351)
• The end of Mongol Yuan Dynasty in China and the beginning of the Ming Dynasty (1368)
• The heresy of Lollardy rises in England
• The Great Schism of the West begins in 1378, eventually leading to 3 simultaneous popes.
• An account of Buddha's life, translated earlier in to Greek by St John of Damascus and widely circulated to Christians as the story of Barlaam and Josaphat had become so popular that Buddha was made a Catholic saint (Josaphat).
• Singapore emerges for the first time as a fortified city and trading centre of some importance.
• Peasants' Revolt in England
• Islam reaches Terangganu, on the Malay peninsula.
• The Hausa found several city-states in the south of modern Niger.
• Mali expands westward and conquers Tekrur.
• The poet Petrarch coins the term Dark Ages to describe the preceding 900 years in Europe, beginning with the fall of the western Roman Empire in 410 through to the renewal embodied in the Renaissance.

Significant people

• Giovanni Boccaccio, Italian author
• Geoffrey Chaucer, English poet
• Don Juan Manuel, Spanish author
• Francesco Petrarch, Italian poet and writer
• William of Ockham, English Franciscan friar and philosopher
• Dante Alighieri, Italian poet and writer

Inventions, discoveries, introductions

• The mechanical clock

Decades and years