Charles I of Hungary had obliged the…

Gediminas is cremated as a part of a fully pagan ceremony in 1342, which includes a human sacrifice, with a favorite servant and several enslaved Germans being burned on the pyre with the corpse.

All these facts assert that Gediminas most likely remained entirely faithful to his native Lithuanian religion, and that his feigned interest in Catholicism was simply a ruse designed to gain allies against the Teutonic Order.

Locarno, located on the northern shore of Lake Maggiore and settled in prehistoric times, is the administrative center of the parish of Locarno.

The podestà or high government official, resided in the Casa della Gallinazza, which had been burned in 1260 during the clashes between the Guelphs and Ghibellines.

Several Locarno families, including members of the Capitanei di Locarno and Simone da Orello, had played an important role in the battles between the two factions.

In 1342, Luchino and Giovanni Visconti conquer the area, which brings Locarno back under the power of Milan.

A Frenchman named Pierre Roger succeeds Pope Benedict XII in 1342 as Pope Clement VI.

Emperor Louis had assured his position in the ongoing struggle between the rival Habsburg, Wittelsbach and Luxembourg dynasties by defeating his Habsburg rival Frederick the Fair at the 1322 Battle of Mühldorf—a fact that had prompted his former Luxembourg ally King John of Bohemia to explore possibilities to increase his own power base.

He had approached Duke Henry of Carinthia, whom he had driven from the Prague throne in 1310, and in 1327 arranged the engagement of his younger son John Henry, brother of the future Emperor Charles IV, with Henry's heiress Margaret.

Margaret is the only surviving daughter of Duke Henry, also Count of Tyrol and former King of Bohemia, with his second wife Adelaide, a daughter of the Welf duke Henry I of Brunswick.

As her father's three marriages had produced no male heirs, he had reached an agreement with Louis IV in 1330 that had enabled Margaret to succeed him in his Carinthian and Tyrolean estates.

John Henry had been sent to Tyrol and in 1330, upon approval by Emperor Louis, he and Margaret had celebrated their wedding in Innsbruck at the age of eight and twelve.

According to contemporary sources, the children disliked each other from the beginning.

By the marriage, King John had secured access to the Alpine mountain passes to Italy, which in turn had driven the emperor to break the arrangements with Margaret's father.

When Henry of Carinthia died in 1335, Louis had given Carinthia to the Habsburg duke Albert II of Austria, who had raised inheritance claims as the eldest son of King Albert I of Germany and Elisabeth of Gorizia-Tyrol, Margaret's paternal aunt.

Nevertheless, when the Tyrolean lands were claimed by the Wittelsbach dynasty, she cleverly played on her affiliation with the rival Luxembourgs.

They had sent John Henry's capable brother Charles in her support, who, backed by local nobles, at least enforced Margaret's succession as Countess of Tyrol.

The situation had again worsened, when young John Henry turned out to be a haughty, incompetent co-ruler and philanderer disrespected by the Tyrolean aristocracy.

His brother Charles had temporarily acted as a regent; however, his mediation efforts had been rejected and in 1336/37 he left Tyrol to join his father on a Prussian Crusade.

When on the evening of November 1, 1341, John Henry came home from hunting, Margaret had refused her husband admittance to their Tirol Castle residence.

Furious, John Henry had moved around the country, but found no shelter in any noble residence.

He had finally been forced to leave the Tyrolean lands and had been received as a refugee by the Aquileia patriarch Bertram of St. Genesius.

Margaret again plays the dynasties off against each other and escapes the revenge of the deprived Luxembourgs by turning to the House of Wittelsbach: in the presence of Emperor Louis IV, she marries his eldest son, Margrave Louis I of Brandenburg, on February 10, 1342, in Meran.

The fact that she has entered the marriage without being granted a divorce from John Henry, thus contravening canon law, causes a veritable scandal on the European stage and earns the couple excommunication by the new Pope Clement VI.

Margrave Louis succeeds in gaining the support of the Tyrolean nobles and takes it upon himself to declare Margaret's marriage to John Henry null and void.

The scholars William of Ockham and Marsilius of Padua defend this "first civil marriage" of the Middle Ages, claiming that John Henry had never consummated his matrimony.

The charges against the Visconti of heresy and excommunication had later been withdrawn and Luchino had become a Papal Vicar in 1341.

The Visconti brothers have bought from the Pope the title of co-rulers of Milan, for five hundred thousand florins.

Pope Clement VI will only issue a bull confirming Giovanni in the archbishopric in 1342.

Officially, he thus is Archbishop of Milan from 1342.

Petrarch's sighting of a woman called "Laura" in the church of Sainte-Claire d'Avignon on April 6, 1327, after he had given up his vocation as a priest, had awakened in him a lasting passion, celebrated in the Rime sparse ("Scattered rhymes").

Renaissance poets who copy Petrarch's style will name this collection of three hundred and sixty-six poems Il Canzoniere ("Song Book").

Laura may have been Laura de Noves, the wife of Count Hugues de Sade (an ancestor of the Marquis de Sade).

There is little definite information in Petrarch's work concerning Laura, except that she is lovely to look at, fair-haired, with a modest, dignified bearing.

Laura and Petrarch had little or no personal contact.

According to his Secretum, she refused him for the very proper reason that she was already married to another man.

He has channeled his feelings into love poems that are exclamatory rather than persuasive, and writes prose that shows his contempt for men who pursue women.

Published in 1342, his collected lyrics—chiefly sonnets, but including some canzoni, sestinas and madrigals—convey the vicissitudes of the poet's love.

Whatever the true name of the lady Petrarch encountered in the Church of Santa Clara, the name Laura is integral to the inner structure and intricate verbal music of the Canzoniere.

Too holy to be painted, Laura is an awe-inspiring goddess.

Sensuality and passion are suggested rather by the rhythm and music that shape the vague contours of the lady.

Although he revises them at least ten times, Petrarch refers to his Canzoniere as a work of little importance, calling them Rerum vulgarium fragmenta ("short pieces in the vernacular").

The innovative Sienese painters and brothers Ambrogio and Pietro Lorenzetti, although occasional collaborators, usually work independently, each making their own distinctive contributions to the development of Italian painting.

Ambrogio, from 1337 to 1339, executes an enormous (more than forty feet/tweve meters wide) panoramic fresco known as “Allegories of Good and Bad Government” in Siena’s Palazzo Pubblico, depicting in strikingly naturalistic detail secular life in city and country under the beneficent government of his town.

Ambrogio paints the “Purification of the Virgin” in 1342 for the Cathedral of Siena.

Like his brother Pietro's notable altarpiece “Birth of the Virgin,” executed for the cathedral at the same time, space is rendered in a deep and naturalistic style (and anticipates even more closely the vanishing-point perspective developed in fifteenth-century Florence).

Ambrogio’s other representatives of the Virgin—either in depictions of the Annunciation or as the Madonna with a very lively, realistic infant Christ—reflect the homely, down-to-earth approach to Christian mysteries characteristic of the age.

European interest in the Canaries picks up quickly after the 1341 mapping expedition.

The descriptions of the primeval Guanches, in particular, draw the attention of European merchants, who immediately see the prospect of new and easy slave-raiding grounds.

Two Majorcan expeditions in 1342, one under Francesc Duvalers, another under Domenech Gual, assembled by private merchant consortia with a commission from Roger de Robenach (representative of James III of Majorca) sets out for the Canary islands.

The results of these expeditions are uncertain.

Valdemar, the youngest son of Christopher II of Denmark and spent most of his childhood and youth in exile at the court of Louis IV, Holy Roman Emperor in Bavaria after the defeats of his father and death and the death and imprisonment, respectively, of his two older brothers Eric and Otto at the hand of the Holsteiners.

Here he had acted as a pretender waiting for a comeback.

Following the assassination of Count Gerhard III by Niels Ebbesen and his brothers, Valdemar had been proclaimed King of Denmark at the Viborg Assembly (landsting) on St Hans Day, June 24, 1340, led by Niels Ebbesen.

By his marriage with Helvig, the daughter of Eric II, Duke of Schleswig, and with what was left to him by his father, he controls about one quarter of the territory of Jutland north of the Kongeå river.

Aalborg's earliest trading privileges date from 1342, when King Valdemar IV receives the town as part of his huge dowry on marrying Helvig of Schleswig.

He is not compelled to sign a charter as his father had done, probably because Denmark had been without a king for years, and no one expects the twenty-year-old king to be any more trouble to the great nobles than his father had been.

But Valdemar is a clever and determined man and realizes that the only way to rule Denmark is to get control of its territory.

The Montfortist Collapse and Joanna of Flanders’ Resistance (1342)

Following John of Montfort’s imprisonment in late 1341, his allies and holdings in Brittany quickly crumbled as his supporters deserted or were defeated by the French army. Over the winter of 1341–1342, Charles of Blois, with French military support, conquered all of eastern Brittany, and by the spring of 1342, he had taken most of western Brittany as well.

With John imprisoned, the Montfortist cause now fell upon his wife, Joanna of Flanders.

Joanna of Flanders: The "Fiery Joanna" Takes Command

• Recognizing that eastern Brittany was indefensible, Joanna retreated to the west, establishing her headquarters at Hennebont.
• However, the French offensive soon pushed her even further west, forcing her to fall back to Brest, where she and her remaining forces were besieged.
• Among her defenders were a handful of English adventurers, led by the bold and resourceful Sir Walter Manny.

The Battle of Brest (July 1342): English Reinforcements Arrive

• Joanna had been expecting English reinforcements, and in July 1342, the Earl of Northampton arrived with an English fleet to break the siege of Brest.
• The resulting naval battle off Brest was a decisive Montfortist victory, forcing the French to lift the siege.
• With English support, Joanna regained the initiative, marking yet another shift in the war’s momentum.

French Strategic Repositioning: Edward III's Looming Invasion

• Meanwhile, in Paris, King Philip VI feared that Edward III would launch a full-scale invasion of northern France once the truce expired.
• Expecting Edward to land at Calais, Philip withdrew the bulk of the French army from Brittany.
• This left Charles of Blois to continue his campaign on his own, without direct royal support.

Impact and Legacy

• The arrival of the English at Brest saved the Montfortist cause, preventing a total French victory in Brittany.
• Joanna of Flanders proved to be one of the most formidable female military leaders of the Middle Ages, refusing to capitulate even in the face of overwhelming odds.
• The withdrawal of French forces from Brittany reflected the larger strategic concerns of the Hundred Years' War, as France had to prepare for Edward III’s anticipated invasion.

The siege of Brest in 1342 and the English victory at sea ensured that Brittany remained contested, prolonging the Breton War of Succession, which would continue for another two decades.