The Noble Uprising Against Floris V and…

The Mongols, now firmly in control of Korea, are curious about Japan and deliver their standard summons to surrender.

When the Japanese make no answer to Kublai Khan’s demands of fealty, Kublai determines to invade them by sea, the Mongols having learned naval warfare on the Yangtze river during their long war of conquest against China’s Song dynasty.

A Mongol-Korean fleet, carrying thirty thousand soldiers and support personnel, sails from Korea, seizes two offshore islands, then lands at Hakata (Fukuoka) in northern Kyushu.

The warriors of the shogunate, their weaponry inferior to Mongol arms, are unable to prevent the establishment of a Mongol bridgehead.

Just as the bridgehead is almost fully established, a huge storm partially destroys the fleet.

That, and the gathering of more Japanese warriors, prompts a Mongol retreat back to Korea, presumably at the prodding of their Korean sailors and captains, rather than regrouping and continuing their attack.

Credit for the storm—called a kamikaze, or divine wind—is given by the Japanese to the god Raiden.

Japan’s Hojo rulers, certain that another invasion will follow, begin erecting fortifications.

Kublai builds more ships.

Ottokar, refusing to recognize his victorious rival, Rudolf of Habsburg, and urging the Pope to adopt a similar policy, incurs the enmity both of rival princes and of his own nobility.

At a convention of the Imperial Diet at Nuremberg in 1274, Rudolf decrees that all imperial lands that had changed hands since the death of Emperor Frederick II must be returned to the crown.

This would deprive Ottokar of Styria, Austria, and Carinthia.

Almost all European rulers agree, with the notable exception of Ottokar.

Abaqa has also sent embassies to Edward I of England, and in 1274 sends a Mongol delegation to Pope Gregory X at the Second Council of Lyons, where Abaqa's secretary Rychaldus reads a report to the assembly, reminding them of Hulagu's friendliness towards Christians, and assuring them that Abaqa plans to drive the Muslims from Syria.

This diplomatic mission of Abaqa and also two further embassies to Europe in 1276 and 1277 will give no tangible results, however.

The Arsenites in Constantinople and elsewhere fanatically oppose the pro-Latin policy of Eastern Roman Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos, professing obedience to the Holy See in the name of their emperor, accept papal supremacy over the Greek Church.

Bonaventure, after having successfully defended his order against the reproaches of the anti-mendicant party, had been elected Minister General of the Franciscan Order.

On November 24, 1265, he had been selected for the post of Archbishop of York; however, he was never consecrated and resigned the appointment in October 1266.

Bonaventure has steered the Franciscans on a moderate and intellectual course that will make them the most prominent order in the Catholic Church until the coming of the Jesuits.

His theology is marked by an attempt completely to integrate faith and reason.

He thinks of Christ as the “one true master” who offers humans knowledge that begins in faith, is developed through rational understanding, and is perfected by mystical union with God.

Bonaventure had been instrumental in procuring the election of Pope Gregory X, who on May 28, 1273, had rewarded him with the title of Cardinal Bishop of Albano, and insisted on his presence at the Second Council of Lyon, convoked to bring about church reform, to launch of a new Crusade to the Holy Land, and to achieve union between the Eastern and Western churches.

Bonaventure and Albertus Magnus are among the better known participants in the council; Thomas Aquinas had died on his way to attend.

The council, convened to consider the liberation of the Holy Land via Crusades and address the East-West Schism with the Eastern church, eventually approves a tithe to support efforts to liberate the Holy Land from Muslims, and works out a tenuous reunion of the two churches (but the Eastern clergy, whose hostility toward the West had greatly intensified after the sacking of Constantinople in 1204 by the Fourth Crusade, will never actually accept it).

The council defines the official Roman Catholic teaching on purgatory (from the Latin purgare, "to cleanse") as the place or state after death where those who have died in a state of grace but not free from imperfection expiate their remaining sins before entering the visible presence of God and the saints. (The damned, on the other hand, go straight to Hell.)

Bonaventure, known as the Seraphic Doctor, resigns soon afterwards as Franciscan minister general on account of illness, which proves mortal.

After his significant contributions lead to a union of the Greek and Latin churches, Bonaventure dies suddenly and in suspicious circumstances on July 15, 1274.

The Catholic Encyclopedia has citations that suggest he was poisoned.

King Philip III, in accordance with the late Alfonso's wishes, grants to Pope Gregory X the Comtat Venaissin, a region surrounding, but not including, the city of Avignon, in about 1274.

Ramon Llull was born into a wealthy family in Palma, the capital of the new Kingdom of Majorca founded by James I of Aragon to integrate politically the recently conquered territories of the Balearic Islands (today part of Spain) in the Crown of Aragon.

His parents had come from Catalonia as part of the colonizing efforts for the formerly Almohad island.

As the island had been conquered militarily, all the Muslim population who had not been able to flee the conquering Europeans had been enslaved, though they still constitute a significant portion of the island's population.

Conversant in Latin, Catalan, Occitan (both considered the same language at the time as "popular Latin") and Arabic, Llull had been well educated, and had become the tutor of James II of Aragon.

By 1257, he had married Blanca Picany and they have had two children, Domènec and Magdalena; yet despite his family he lives, as before, a troubadour's life.

About this time he had become the Seneschal (the administrative head of the royal household) to the future King James II of Majorca, a relative of his wife.

A key event in his early life was his religious conversion.

In 1265, he had had a religious epiphany, a vision of Christ crucified.

The vision came to him five times in all.

As a consequence of this conversion experience, he took the habit of the Third Order of St. Francis the following year, leaving his position and family to live a life of solitude and study for the next nine years.

During this time, he had learned Arabic from an enslaved Muslim he had purchased.

His first major work, Art Abreujada d'Atrobar Veritat (The Abbreviated Art of Finding Truth) had been written in Catalan and then translated into Latin.

He has written treatises on alchemy and botany, Ars Magna, and Llibre de meravelles.

He has written the romantic novel Blanquerna, the first major work of literature written in Catalan, and perhaps the first European novel.

Llull presses for the study of Arabic and other then-insufficiently studied languages in Spain for the purpose of converting Muslims to Christianity.

He has even written some books in Arabic.

His interest in finding a common ground between Christianity, Islam, and Judaism makes him one of the earliest ecumenists.

However, his mission to convert the Jews of Europe is zealous, his goal to utterly relieve Christendom of any Jews or Jewish religious influence.

Some scholars regard Llull's as the first comprehensive articulation, in the Christian West, of an expulsionist policy regarding Jews who refused conversion.

To acquire converts, he works for amicable public debate to foster an intellectual appreciation of a rational Christianity among the Jews of his time.

His rabbinic opponents include Rabbi Shlomo ben Aderet of Barcelona and Moshe ben Shlomo of Salerno.

Pope Gregory X decrees in 1274 that conclaves (meetings during which the electors have no contact with the outside) should be used for papal elections, reforming the electoral process which had taken over three years to elect him.

In this same year, he issues a bull denying the existence of ritual murders by Jews.

Following his pleas at the Council of Lyons in 1274, Gregory discovers that, although Europe is aware of the gravity of the Eastern situation, it is both unwilling and unable to give substantial aid.

The influence of the Tunisian Hafsids had rapidly waned in the western Maghreb, and Ceuta's inhabitants had eventually expelled them in 1249.

The Marinid amir, Abu Yusuf Yaqub, enters peacefully into Ceuta in 1279, putting an end to some twenty-five years of independence of the city.

The troops of the Marinid dynasty takes the city of Algiers, at this time independent of the Zenata Berber Ziyanid Emirate.

King Henry III had died while his sons were on crusade.

Edward was deeply saddened by this news, but rather than hurrying home at once, he had made a leisurely journey northwards.

This was partly due to his health still being poor, but also due to a lack of urgency.

The political situation in England is stable after the mid-century upheavals, and Edward had been proclaimed king at his father's death, rather than at his own coronation, as had until then been customary.

In Edward's absence, the country has been governed by a royal council, led by Robert Burnell.

The new king had embarked on an overland journey through Italy and France, where among other things he had visited the pope in Rome and suppressed a rebellion in Gascony.

Only on August 2, 1274, does he return to England, and is crowned on August 19; the Earl of Gloucester entertains him at Tonbridge Castle.

Upon returning home, Edward immediately embarks on the administrative business of the nation, and his major concern is restoring order and reestablishing royal authority after the disastrous reign of his father.

To accomplish this, he immediately orders an extensive change of administrative personnel.

The most important of these is the appointment of Robert Burnell as chancellor, a man who will remain in the post until 1292 as one of the king's closest associates.

His interim chancellor and effective regent, Walter de Merton, retires from royal service to make the final revisions to his statutes for the foundation of Merton College, Oxford and take up the post of Bishop of Rochester.

One of Edward's first acts is to enforce a decree requiring all English Jews to wear yellow badges.

The first main survey of the Hundred Rolls, an English census seen as a follow up to the Domesday Book completed in 1086, is begun; it will last until 1275.