TIMELINE

Year

Event

406

Barbarians invade the Roman Empire across the frozen River Rhine

410

The Goths sack Rome

455

The Vandals sack Rome

476

The last Roman Emperor in the West, Romulus Augustulus, is deposed

526

Boethius executed; Consolation of Philosophy published

622

Mohammed flees from Mecca to Medina; start of the Muslim calendar

732

Charles Martel defeats Muslim invaders of France at the Battle of Poitiers

800

Charlemagne crowned Emperor in Rome

999

Gerbert of Aurillac becomes Pope

1066

William of Normandy invades England; Battle of Hastings

1085

Muslim city of Toledo in Spain falls to Christians with its library intact

1086

Compilation of the Domesday Book

1092

Walcher makes an astronomical observation with an astrolabe

1093

Anselm appointed archbishop of Canterbury

1121

The first trial of Peter Abelard

1140

The second trial of Peter Abelard

1158

The world’s first university in Bologna granted imperial privileges

1204

Constantinople falls to the fourth crusade

1210

Aristotle’s books on natural philosophy banned in Paris

1231

The Pope reinstates Aristotle’s books on natural philosophy

1257

Thomas Aquinas receives his doctorate in theology in Paris

1268

Roger Bacon completes his Opus Maior, Opus Minor and Opus Tertium for the Pope

1272

Earliest mention of a mechanical clock

1277

The bishop of Paris condemns 219 propositions derived from the philosophy of Averröes

1284

Traditional date for the invention of spectacles

1309

The Pope leaves Rome to take up residence in Avignon in Southern France

1320

John Buridan begins to teach philosophy at Paris

1323

Thomas Aquinas canonised

1327

Cecco D’Ascoli burnt in Florence for subjecting God to astrology

1335

William Heytesbury’s Rules for Solving Logical Puzzles published, containing the mean speed theorem

1339

Failed effort to ban the ideas of William of Ockham from Paris

1347

The Black Death first appears in western Europe

1347

Nicholas of Autrecourt recants his errors after appeal to the Pope fails

1377

The Pope returns to Rome but an anti-Pope remains at Avignon. Beginning of the Western Schism

1417

The schism ends with the election of an undisputed pope.

1434

The dome on Florence’s cathedral is complete

1453

Constantinople falls to the Turks

1455

Johann Gutenberg prints his great Bible with moveable type

1488

Bartolomeu Dias doubles the Cape of Good Hope

1492

Columbus sails across the Atlantic

1492

Granada becomes the last Muslim enclave in southern Spain to fall to Christians

1513

The Catholic Church proclaims that the immortality of the soul can be proved philosophically

1517

Martin Luther nails his 95 theses to a church door in Wittenberg and sparks the Reformation

1535

The medieval syllabus abolished at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge

1537

New Science by Niccolò Tartaglia shows projectiles move in curves

1540

Ignatius Loyola founds the Jesuits

1543

Publications of Copernicus’s On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, Vesalius’s On the Fabric of the Human Body and Archimedes’ Works

1553

Michael Servetus burnt at the stake in Geneva

1559

The Catholic Church launches its first Index of Prohibited Books

1563

The Council of Trent concludes and starts the Counter-Reformation

1572

A supernova appears in the heavens and proves not to be an atmospheric phenomenon

1575

Death of Jerome Cardan in Rome

1577

Appearance of a comet observed by Tycho Brahe

1600

Publication of William Gilbert’s On the Magnet

1610

Galileo announces his new discoveries with the telescope

1616

The Catholic Church condemns the ideas of Copernicus

1618

Beginning of the Thirty Years War between Catholics and Protestants in Germany

1627

Kepler publishes the Rudulphine Astronomical Tables whose accuracy leads to the acceptance of heliocentricism

1628

William Harvey publishes On the Motion of the Heart

1632

Publication of Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems

1633

The trial of Galileo in Rome

1638

Publication of Galileo’s Discourses on Two New Sciences

1642

Death of Galileo