800 |
Click
here to go to the previous century.
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 minuscule 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. |
802 |
Egbert becomes King
of Wessex. He rules until 839. |
808 |
Jewish merchants in
Lombardy open the first bank/money repository. |
814 |
Louis the Pious (Charlemagne's
son) becomes Holy Roman Emperor and king of the Franks.
He rules until 840. |
828 |
c. 827-28, King Egbert of Wessex
is recognized as overlord of the other Anglo-Saxon kings. |
838 |
Louis the Pious divides
his empire among his sons Lothair, Louis the German, and
Charles the Bald, beginning a tradition of partible
succession that will weaken the Frankish
Empire. |
839 |
Aethelwulf, son of
Egbert, becomes King of Wessex.He rules until 858. |
842 |
|
844 |
Kenneth MacAlpine,
King of the Scots, conquers the Picts and founds a unified
Scotland. |
846 |
|
850 |
The Acropolis of Zimbabwe
is built in Rhodesia (not to be confused with the Greek
Acropolis).
c. 850 Increasing number of Viking incursions in Britain. |
853 |
Viking invaders take
over Ireland. Viking rulers will remain in power untl
1014. |
855 |
Louis II, son of Lothair,
succeeds him Holy Roman Emperor. Lothair's lands are again
subdivided under partible
succession. Annals of St. Neots (an 11th century source) states
that King Edmund crowned at Bures. |
856 |
Main tide of the Viking
invasions in Britain occur between 856-875. For a longer
list of Viking attacks, click
here. |
858 |
Aethelbald (eldest
son of Aethelwulf) becomes King of Wessex. He rules
until
860. |
859 |
|
860 |
Aethelbert (second
son of Aethelwulf) succeeds his brother and becomes King
of Wessex. He rules until 865. |
861 |
Vikings discover Iceland. |
862 |
Rurik the Viking
with the Viking tribe of Russ seizes power in northern
Russia. They found Novgorod as a capital.
Constantine the Philosophoer
(alias Saint Cyril) invents the 42-letter Slavonic alphabet
as a tool for converting the Moravians to Christianity. |
865 |
Aethelred I, third
son of Aethelwulf, succeeds his brother and bcomes King
of Wessex. He rules until 871.
Russian Vikings attack Constantinople.
Major Viking force
invading Britain conquers Northumbria, East Anglia,
and Mercia. Anglo-Saxon Chronicles mention in passing
that Vikings are winter-settling in East Anglia, and
that the locals are making peace with the Vikings
by offering them horses. |
868 |
In China, Buddhist monks at Tun-Huang
monastic caverns print a version of The Diamond Sutra.
(Printing will not be independently invented in the west
until Guttenberg in the 1400s.) |
869 |
The Arabs conquer
Malta.
Version A of the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle mention that a Danish host rides across
Mercia into East Anglia and winter-settle in Thetford.
Death of King Edmund at Viking hands and destruction
of many monasteries. |
871 |
The Danes attack
the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex, but Aethelred's forces
defeat them at Ashdown.
Alfred the Great (youngest son
of Aethelwulf) succeeds his brother and becomes King
of Wessex. He rules until 891. Alfred will eventually found the British navy and personally translate Pope Gregory's Pastoral Care, Boethius, Orosius, Bede.
Anglo-Saxon Chronicles revised and continued through 892.
West Saxon Martyrology written. |
874 |
First Viking settlements
in Iceland after discovering the island in 861. |
875 |
Charles the Bald becomes
Holy Roman Emperor. He rules until 877.
c. 875-900 Probable beginnings of medieval drama, which may have begun as dramatization of liturgy. First known text of an Easter trope, Quem Quaeritis, from Swiss monastery of Saint Gall.
|
877 |
Charles the Bald,
Holy Roman Emperor, dies in 877. Anarchy breaks out after
his death. |
878 |
Alfred defeats
the Danes stunningly at Edington. Vikings agree in Treaty
of Wedmore to divide England between the Danelaw
to the north and Wessex in the south. Partial evacuation of the Danes in the south to northeastern regions. |
879 |
Gorgonzola Cheese invented by
farmers in the Po Valley of Italy. |
880 |
Emperor Basil of Byzantium
recovers Italy from Muslim forces. |
886 |
King Alfred the
Great captures London from the Danes.
Monks under command of King Alfred
the Great ordered to perfect the wax candle 24-hour
measurement system for keeping track of time. |
887 |
|
890 |
Technique of nailed-on horseshoes
invented and spreads through Siberia, Byzantium, and Germany.
By 890, numismatic
evidence in East Anglia (under Danish rule) shows that
Edmund is already being recognized as a saint. |
891 |
King Alfred the Great
orders the beginning of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
to be written, one of the first histories of England. |
892 |
|
893 |
Charles the Simple
becomes King of France. He rules until 929.
Asser writes The Life of Alfred the Great--the first life-record of a layman rather than a church figure among monkish biographers.
|
899 |
Edward the Elder,
King of Wessex, rules until 924. |
900 |
Alfonso III begins reconquest
of Spain, slowly defeating Moorish overlords.
Bulgars convert from Paganism
to the Eastern Orthodox religion.
First Chinese concave.
Curved
iron mouldboard ploughs invented.
Click
here to go to 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.