1225
Thomas Aquinas born at Roccasecca
In a hilltop castle south of Rome, the fifth son of a count of Aquino was born into a family with monastic ambitions. He would choose the new Dominicans over old Benedictines, defy his family's kidnapping attempts, and become the most influential Catholic theologian ever. His classmates called him the dumb ox for his silence; his teacher Albert predicted his bellow would one day fill the world.
Tran dynasty takes power in Vietnam
After decades of Ly decline, the powerful Tran clan arranged the marriage of a child empress to their own candidate and assumed the throne of Dai Viet. The new dynasty would soon face, and remarkably repel, three separate Mongol invasions from the north. Their success owed much to a tradition of guerrilla warfare adapted to the rivers and jungles that steppe cavalry could not conquer.
Wari remnants collapse in the Andes
Across the Peruvian highlands, the last provincial centers of the old Wari empire were abandoned as regional polities reasserted themselves. Into the vacuum came smaller ethnic lords, the curacas, whose rivalries would eventually be unified by the Incas two centuries later. The elaborate Wari road system and hilltop administrative centers decayed slowly, their engineered terraces reclaimed by wild grasses and grazing llama herds.
Magna Carta reissued in definitive form
The regent government of young Henry III issued a revised Magna Carta stripped of its most radical clauses but still enshrining the principle that the king was bound by law. This 1225 version, not John's original, became the text cited by every subsequent generation of English constitutional lawyers. It was enrolled on the statute books and read aloud in every shire court twice a year.