1397
Medici Bank founded in Florence
Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici opened a small banking partnership on a Florentine corner. His sons and grandson would expand it into the most influential financial institution in Europe, lending to popes and kings, financing the Renaissance, and indirectly placing Medici lords on thrones across the Italian and French states.
Ming relocates Muslim administrators to frontier
Hongwu's late policies included shifts of Central Asian Muslim officials from eastern cities to the northwest frontier, partly to weaken their political cohesion and partly to populate the border defenses. Among those resettled were ancestors of the future admiral Zheng He, whose Yunnanese Hui family would produce the Ming's greatest maritime commander.
Union of Kalmar: Margaret rules three crowns
The shrewd queen Margaret I of Denmark assembled a treaty at Kalmar in southeastern Sweden binding Denmark, Norway, and Sweden under a single monarch. Her young grand-nephew Eric of Pomerania was crowned king of all three in a ceremony designed to emphasize Scandinavian unity. The union, fragile from the start, would last formally until 1523.
Manuel Chrysoloras teaches Greek in Florence
Invited by Coluccio Salutati to teach at the Florentine studium, the Byzantine scholar lectured on ancient Greek to a generation of Italian humanists including Leonardo Bruni. For the first time in a thousand years, western Europeans began to learn Greek systematically, unlocking Plato, Thucydides, and Homer in the original. The Italian Renaissance acquired a Greek wing.