700 |
Click here
to go to previous century.
The Arabs conquer Tunis. Coptic Christianity is neary
wiped out.
First surviving samples of Porcelain from the T'ang
Dynasty in China.
Chinese invent ships with stern-post rudder.
C. 700 So-called "School of Caedmon" flourishes in Britain. Anglo-Saxon biblical paraphrases such as Genesis A and B, Exodus, Daniel, and the poem Judith written about this time. |
702 |
Ethiopians attack Arab shipping in the Red
Sea. Arabs in turn occupy Ethiopian seaports. |
707 |
Muslims capture Tangier. |
709 |
Muslims capture Ceuta. |
710 |
Justinian II confirms papal privileges.
Roderic becomes the last Visigoth king over Spain, ruling
until 711 CE. |
711 |
Arab and Berber Moors invade Spain. Visigoth
king Roderic is overthrown and Christian rule ends in
his region of Spain. |
712 |
Muslims establish a state in Sind (modern
day Pakistan) |
716 |
Second Arab siege of Constantinople commences. |
717 |
Second Arab siege of Constantinople collapses
in failure. Constantinople remains unconquered. |
718 |
Visigothic prince Pelayo founds a guerilla
kingdom (Asturias) in Spanish mountains. The Moors now
hold most of the rest of Spain and Portugal, but continue
to advance northwards.
Christian forces defeat Moorish army at the battle of
Covadonga. |
726 |
Byzantine Emperor Leo III, perhaps strongly
influenced by Islamic taunts, begins the Iconoclast
Movement. He believes that the depictions, sculptures,
and other images of saints and Apostles are being worshipped
in an idolatrous manner. He outlaws such art and orders
the destruction of existing artwork. Pope Gregory II
opposes his policy.
King Ine of Wessex first creates "Peter's Pence"
tax to support a college in Rome. |
730 |
The power struggle between Emperor and Pope
intensifies. Pope Gregory II excommunicates Emperor Leo
III. |
731 |
The Venerable Bede completes his history of the Church
in England, The Ecclesiastical History of the English
People. It is the first history written of the English people as a whole. |
732 |
Charles Martel "The Hammer" (Charlemagne's
grandfather and the gris eminence behind the
Frankish court as mayor of the palace) meets a Moorish
force in Tours. He defeats the Moors, halting the northward
advance of Islam into Europe. |
733 |
Leo III withdraws Byzantine provinces of
southern Italy from papal jurisdiction. |
735 |
Death of the Venerable Bede. On his death-bed,
he tells his grievous brother-monks, "Do not weep
for me. Today is my birthday." |
737 |
Charles Martel "The Hammer" defeats
the Moors at Narbonne. |
739 |
Second Coptic rebellion in Egypt. |
741 |
Pepin the Short succeeds his father, Charles
Martel "The Hammer," in the important position
of Mayor of the Palace. |
746 |
Greeks retake Cyprus from the Arabs. |
c. 750-800? |
Beowulf written in current form (date is a matter of debate--many scholars like Kevin Kiernan argue it is two centuries younger).
Flourishing period of Christian poetry in Northumbria (preserved in later West Saxon versions)
So-called "School of Cynewulf": Christ narrative, Elene, Juliana, Fates of the Apostles, Andreas, various saints' lives, the Phoenix. |
751 |
Pepin the Short crowned King of the Franks,
founding the Carolingian Dynasty.
Arabs defeat Chinese forces at Samarkand. |
756 |
Abd-al-Rahman ibn Mu'awiya establishes Omayyad control
in Cordoba, Spain.
Pepin the Short leads Frankish army to protect Pope Stephen
III from the Lombards. Formation of the Papal states in
Italy. |
757 |
Offa inherits throne of Mercia. He builds
Offa's Dike as a defense against Welsh incursions. |
767 |
Third Coptic revolt commences in Egypt. |
770 |
Oldest known block-printing (Buddhist magic charms). |
771 |
Charlemagne inherits Frankish throne from
his deceased father, Pepin. He rules until 814. |
772 |
Charlemagne conquers Saxony and converts
it by the sword to Christianity.
Third Coptic revolt in Egypt collapses. |
773 |
Charlegmagne annexes Lombardy into his holdings. |
778 |
Moors and Basques defeat Franks at Roncesvalles
in the border mountains between Spain and France. This
leads to the inspiration for The Song of Roland
in medieval literature. |
779 |
Offa, King of Mercia, becomes dominant over all the
other Ango-Saxon kingdoms in England. |
780 |
Constantine VI becomes figure-head Byzantine
Emperor. In actual fact, the power behind the throne is
Irene, his domineering mother. |
782 |
Charlemagne summons the monk/scholar Saint
Alcuin from York to head the palace school of Aachen,
leading to a revival of learning in Europe. |
786 |
Harun al-Raschid, Caliph at Baghdad, rules
to 809 CE. |
787 |
Council of Nicea orders resumed veneration of images
in the Church.
Lost Danish ship lands at Portland Bill. King's reeve
at Dorchester tries to collect taxes from them, and
the confused Danes kill them--the first "Viking Invasion" foreshadowing later large-scale incursions. |
788 |
Charlemagne annexes Bavaria. |
791 |
Constantine VI imprisons his domineering
mother and assumes power. |
796 |
Death of Offa ends Mercian dominance in
England. |
797 |
Irene, Empress of Byzantium has her son
blinded. She is eventually deposed in 802 CE. |
800 |
Pope Leo III crowns Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor
of the West.
Vikings attack Germany.
Feudal system develops among the Franks and spreads
across Europe during the 800s.
Carolingian miniscule script invented by various scholars
under the auspices of Saint Alcuin, the Anglo-Saxon
abbot serving the Frankish Emperor, Charlemagne, in
the abbey of Tours.
Music cultivated in monasteries during the 800s; development
of "sequences" or elaborated passages in liturgical
music.
Click here to go to the
next century.
|
-
Baugh, A. C. and Thomas Cable. A
History of the English Language. 3rd edition. NJ: Englewood Cliffs,
NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1978. [Now superseded by a sixth edition]
-
Cooke, Jean et al. History's
Timeline: A 40,000 Year Chronology of Civilization. Ed. Fay Franklin.
NY: Barnes and Noble, 1981. Updated 1996.
- Crow, Martin and Virginia E. Leland. "A Chronology
of Chaucer's Life and Times." As condensed and reproduced in Larry Benson's
The Canterbury Tales, Complete. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company,
2000. xxiii-xxv.
-
Englebert, Omer. The Lives of the Saints.
Trans. Christopher and Anne Fremantle. NY: Barnes and Noble, 1994.
-
Haywood, John. The Penguin Historical
Atlas of the Vikings. London: Penguin Books, 1995.
-
Lau, D. C., ed. "Chronological
Table." Tao Te Ching. London: Penguin Books, 1963.
-
McEvedy, Colin. The New Penguin Atlas
of Medieval History. London: Penguin Books, n. d.
-
Schafer, Edward H. Ancient China.
Ed. Russelll Bourne, et al. Great Ages of Man Series. NY: Time-Life
Books, 1967. Reprint 1976.
-
Urban, Linwood. A Short History of Christian
Thought. Revised edition. NY: Oxford University Press, 1995.