…in addition to confirming the Venetian possession…

King Eric's introduction in 1429 of the Sound Dues (Øresundtolden), which will last until 1857, is perhaps his most far-ranging act.

He secures by this act a large stable income for his kingdom that will make it relatively rich and which will make the town of Elsinore flourish.

It shows his interest in Danish trade and naval power, but also permanently challenges the other Baltic powers, especially the Hanseatic cities against which he also fights.

Jean Gerson, former chancellor of the University of Paris, after returning in 1419 from the Tyrol to France,  had gone to Lyon, where his brother was prior of the Celestine monastery.

Although Gerson is retired from active university life, the past decade at Lyon has been a time of great literary productivity.

He has produced a harmony of the gospels (the Monotesseron), works on the poems of the bible climaxing in a massive collection of twelve treatises on the Magnificat (Lk. 1:46-55), a commentary on the Song of Songs, as well as an extensive literary correspondence with members of the Carthusian order and others on mysticism and other issues of spiritual life.

Shortly before his death at sixty-five on July 12, 1429, he produces a tract in support of Joan of Arc.

A large fragment of a mid-first century marble statue of a seated pugilist by the Athenian sculptor Apollonius, the son of Nestor, is found in Rome before 1430.

Known as the Belvedere Torso (and closely related to the bronze statue of a seated boxer now in the Terme Museum, Rome, which is probably by the same sculptor and suggests the statue's original appearance), the Belvedere Torso influences contemporary Italian painters, sculptors, and graphic artists on their various renditions of the male torso.

The Maltese islands had been completely Christianized by the fifteenth century, and had just been freed from feudalism in 1426.

At this time, Malta has a population of about sixteen thousand to eighteen thousand people.

Malta's defense consists of an Aragonese army, as well as three hundred Maltese Dejma soldiers.

In September 1429, an army of about eighteen thousand Hafsid Saracens led by Kaid Ridavan arrive in Malta from Tunisia.

They want to capture the islands as a post for further conquests.

The Hafsids first attack the capital city of Mdina.

More soldiers are rallied and about four thousand men take up arms against the Hafsid invaders After three days of fierce fighting, the Saracens leave the city, looting the other towns on the way.

Anti-Jewish preaching by Bernardino of Siena and other Franciscans prompts delegates from Jewish communities to meet in Bologna and …

…Forlì to respond; …

…the meetings result in pro-Jewish bulls by Pope Martin V, who tries to control the tone of the Franciscans' preaching.

In 1429, Martin enacts a bull providing a sweeping measure of protection of the Jews, which will remain largely unenforced.

A Venetian governor is established at Bergamo and …

…Crema in 1429 …

The Florentines recover the strongholds they had lost, apart from Volterra, which rebels against the new settlement.

The troops sent to reduce that city, under Niccolò Fortebraccio, …