1375
Mamluk Sultanate conquers the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia
The last Crusader ally in the Levant fell when Mamluk armies overran the Armenian fortress of Sis, capturing King Leo VI and ending three centuries of Armenian sovereignty on the Mediterranean coast. Leo would die in Parisian exile, the last king of a people who would wait five centuries for another state.
Boccaccio dies at Certaldo
The author of the Decameron, having spent his final decade as a respectable scholar of Latin and Greek, died in his Tuscan hometown at sixty-two. He had publicly lectured on Dante at the request of the Florentine commune, walking the audience through hell three days a week, weeping as he read the most harrowing cantos aloud.
Hongwu purges his own officials
The Ming emperor executed his prime minister Hu Weiyong and, with him, thirty thousand officials and family members over alleged conspiracies. Hongwu abolished the post of prime minister permanently, concentrating all governmental authority in the throne and creating a system of direct imperial oversight. Chinese governance became structurally more autocratic than any previous dynasty.
Catalan Atlas compiled in Majorca
The Jewish cartographer Abraham Cresques completed for the Aragonese court a vast world map on parchment, decorated with caravan routes, the Mali king holding a golden nugget, the silk road, and Marco Polo's east. It stretched from the Atlantic to the China Sea across twelve panels. It was Europe's most detailed image of the world before the Atlantic discoveries.
Tvrtko I crowned King of Bosnia and Serbia
The Ban of Bosnia crowned himself at the monastery of Mileseva, claiming both the Bosnian and Serbian royal traditions as heir to the Nemanjic line. Under Tvrtko, Bosnia reached its greatest territorial extent, briefly rivaling Serbia and Hungary. His kingdom perched between Catholic west and Orthodox east, embracing both and belonging fully to neither.