1226
Francis of Assisi dies at the Portiuncula
Singing a canticle to Sister Death, the ragged mystic who had preached to birds and kissed lepers died in the tiny chapel outside Assisi where his order had begun. Two years later he was canonized. His body remains in a crypt beneath the basilica that bears his name. The enormous church built above his grave was precisely the kind of monument his life had repudiated.
Jochi Khan dies on the Kazakh steppe
Genghis Khan's eldest son, whose legitimacy was always questioned due to his mother's captivity, died in his Central Asian appanage months before his father. His sons Batu and Orda would inherit the western territories and build the Golden Horde, the Mongol successor state that would last longest of all. Rumors that Genghis had ordered his son's death persisted among the steppe clans for generations.
Louis IX ascends the French throne as a boy
Upon the death of his father Louis VIII, the twelve-year-old prince inherited the Capetian crown under the sharp regency of his mother Blanche of Castile. He would rule for forty-four years, build the Sainte-Chapelle, and die on crusade, earning the rare title Saint. Blanche governed France with an iron hand during his minority, crushing baronial revolts and securing the realm for her son.
Teutonic Knights begin crusade in Prussia
Invited by the Polish Duke Conrad of Masovia to subdue the pagan Prussians on his border, the Teutonic Order crossed the Vistula with papal blessing and began a half-century campaign of conquest, conversion, and colonization that would transform the Baltic shore into a German-speaking monastic state. The Prussians resisted fiercely, but the order's stone castles and steady stream of crusading volunteers ground down their resistance.