Political Events

The Great Interregnum that has left the Holy Roman Empire without a ruler since the death of the last Hohenstaufen king in 1254 ends September 29 with the election of the Count of Hapsburg as German king. Having increased his estates at the expense of his uncle Hartmann of Kyburg and the bishops of Strasbourg and Basel, the 55-year-old Rudolf has gained election largely through the efforts of his brother-in-law Friedrich III of Hohenzollern, burgrave of Nuremberg, purchasing support from the duke of Saxe-Lauenburg and the duke of Upper Bavaria by betrothing two of his daughters to them. He promises to renounce imperial rights in Rome, in the papal territories, and in Sicily. He also vows to lead a new crusade and is thereupon recognized by Pope Gregory X, who crowns him October 24 at Aix-la-Chapelle; he will reign until 1291 as the emperor Rudolf I.

Granada's Mohammed I dies at age 69 (approximate) after a 41-year reign that has founded the Nasrid dynasty.

Literature

Nonfiction: Summa Theologica by Thomas Aquinas, now 48, who began the work in 1267. Divine knowledge, he says, cannot "be sought by man through his reason, nevertheless, once . . . revealed by God [it] must be accepted by faith." He stops writing December 6 leaving the work incomplete: "I can do no more; such things have been revealed to me that all I have written seems as straw, and I now await the end of my life" (see 1323).

The pantheistic Persian Sufi mystic and poet Jalaluddin Rumi (Jalal ad-Din ar-Rumi) dies at Konya in Anatolia December 17 at age 66, having written some 26,000 verses and parables (the Masnavi). A follower of the guru Shams of Tabriz (his collected works will be known as Kolliyat Shams Tabrizi), Rumi was born at Balkh, has lived much of his adult life at Konya, where he has founded the Order of the Dancing (or Whirling) Dervishes, and has also been known as Mawlana.

Art

Painting: Roman painter-mosaicist Pietro Cavallini, 23, completes mosaics for Rome's Church of Santa Maria Maggiore.

1271 1272 1273 1274 1275 1276 1277 1278 1279 1280