1306
Robert Bruce stabs Comyn before the altar
In the Greyfriars church at Dumfries, Bruce and John Comyn argued over the Scottish crown. Blades came out on holy ground. Comyn bled to death before the high altar, a sacrilege that shocked Christendom. Excommunicated and hunted, Bruce rode to Scone six weeks later and had himself crowned king of a country he barely held.
Philip IV expels the Jews of France
On a single morning, royal bailiffs knocked at every synagogue door. Around a hundred thousand Jews were arrested, their debts transferred to the crown, their houses and books auctioned. Philip needed cash for his Flemish wars. The expulsion, the second in a century after his grandfather's in 1182, showed how useful a scapegoat could be to royal finance.
Wenceslaus III of Bohemia assassinated at Olomouc
The last of the Přemyslid kings was stabbed to death in a Dominican convent while preparing to claim the Polish crown. His assassin was never conclusively identified. With him ended a dynasty that had ruled Bohemia for four centuries. The throne passed to the Luxembourgs, who would reshape Central Europe from Prague's castle hill.
Giotto begins Bardi Chapel frescoes
After finishing the Scrovegni cycle in Padua, Giotto returned to Florence to fresco the Bardi and Peruzzi chapels in Santa Croce with scenes from the lives of Saint Francis and John the Baptist. His figures gained monumentality, their gestures distilled to an austere grandeur. Florentine patricians now commissioned chapels as personal portraits in paint and architecture.