Pope Benedict XII, born Jacques Fournier, was head of the Catholic Church from 30 December 1334 to his death, in April 1342. He was the third Avignon pope and reformed monastic orders and opposed nepotism. Unable to remove his capital to Rome or Bologna, Benedict started the great palace at Avignon. He settled the beatific vision controversy of Pope John XXII by stating that souls may attain the "fullness of the beatific vision" before the Last Judgment. Despite many diplomatic attempts with Emperor Louis IV to resolve their differences, Benedict failed to bring the Holy Roman Empire back under papal dominance. He died 25 April 1342 and was buried in Avignon.
Year 1321 (MCCCXXI) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Julian calendar.
Philip V, known as the Tall, was King of France and Navarre from 1316 to 1322. Philip engaged in a series of domestic reforms intended to improve the management of the kingdom. These reforms included the creation of an independent Court of Finances, the standardization of weights and measures, and the establishment of a single currency.
Charles IV, called the Fair in France and the Bald in Navarre, was last king of the direct line of the House of Capet, King of France and King of Navarre from 1322 to 1328. Charles was the third son of Philip IV; like his father, he was known as "the fair" or "the handsome".
James II, called the Just, was the King of Aragon and Valencia and Count of Barcelona from 1291 to 1327. He was also the King of Sicily from 1285 to 1295 and the King of Majorca from 1291 to 1298. From 1297 he was nominally the King of Sardinia and Corsica, but he only acquired the island of Sardinia by conquest in 1324. His full title for the last three decades of his reign was "James, by the grace of God, king of Aragon, Valencia, Sardinia and Corsica, and count of Barcelona".
The Popish Plot was a fictitious conspiracy invented by Titus Oates that between 1678 and 1681 gripped the kingdoms of England and Scotland in anti-Catholic hysteria. Oates alleged that there was an extensive Catholic conspiracy to assassinate Charles II, accusations that led to the executions of at least 22 men and precipitated the Exclusion Bill Crisis. During this tumultuous period, Oates weaved an intricate web of accusations, fueling public fears and paranoia. However, as time went on, the lack of substantial evidence and inconsistencies in Oates's testimony began to unravel the plot. Eventually, Oates himself was arrested and convicted for perjury, exposing the fabricated nature of the conspiracy.
Bernard Gui, also known as Bernardo Gui or Bernardus Guidonis, was a Limousin Dominican friar, Bishop of Lodève, and a papal inquisitor during the later stages of the Medieval Inquisition.
History of European Jews in the Middle Ages covers Jewish history in the period from the 5th to the 15th century. During the course of this period, the Jewish population gradually started shifting from the Levant to Europe, primarily Central Europe dominated by the Holy Roman Empire or Southern Europe dominated by the Iberian kingdoms. As with Christianity, the Middle Ages were the period when Judaism became mostly insignificant in the Middle East, and a front-of-mind part of Europe.
The Rhineland massacres, also known as the German Crusade of 1096 or Gzerot Tatnó, were a series of mass murders of Jews perpetrated by mobs of French and German Christians of the People's Crusade in the year 1096, or 4856 according to the Hebrew calendar. These massacres are often seen as the first in a sequence of antisemitic events in Europe which culminated in the Holocaust.
The Order of Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem, also known as the Leper Brothers of Jerusalem or simply as Lazarists, was a Catholic military order founded by Crusaders around 1119 at a leper hospital in Jerusalem, Kingdom of Jerusalem, whose care became its original purpose, named after its patron saint, Lazarus. It was recognised by King Fulk of Jerusalem in 1142 and canonically recognised as a hospitaller and military order of chivalry under the rule of Saint Augustine in the Papal bull Cum a Nobis Petitur of Pope Alexander IV in 1255. Although they were centred on their charism of caring for those afflicted with leprosy, the knights of the Order of Saint Lazarus notably fought in the Battle of La Forbie in 1244 and in the Defense of Acre in 1291. The titular seat was successively situated at Jerusalem, then Acre. After the fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the order split into two main branches – in Italy and in France.
Matthew 8:2 is the second verse of the eighth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament. This verse begins the miracle story of Jesus cleansing a leper, the first of a series of miracles in Matthew.
Antisemitism in the history of the Jews in the Middle Ages became increasingly prevalent in the Late Middle Ages. Early instances of pogroms against Jews are recorded in the context of the First Crusade. Expulsions of Jews from cities and instances of blood libel became increasingly common from the 13th to the 15th century. This trend only peaked after the end of the medieval period, and it only subsided with Jewish emancipation in the late 18th and 19th centuries.
This timeline of antisemitism chronicles events in the history of antisemitism, hostile actions or discrimination against Jews as members of a religious and/or ethnic group. It includes events in Jewish history and the history of antisemitic thought, actions which were undertaken in order to counter antisemitism or alleviate its effects, and events that affected the prevalence of antisemitism in later years. The history of antisemitism can be traced from ancient times to the present day.
The Shepherds' Crusade of 1320 was a popular crusade in Normandy in June 1320. Also well known as "the Pastoureaux of 1320". It originally began when a large group of common-folk banded together to preach a crusade after a teenage shepherd said he was visited by the Holy Spirit. Initially aiming to help the Reconquista of Iberia, it failed to gain support from the church or nobility and instead murdered hundreds of Jews in France and Aragon.
Behkadeh Raji is the first leper colony to be built as an economically self-sufficient, independent village. It was built in 1961 on the initiative of Farah Pahlavi in Iran. The aim of the village concept was to not only achieve optimal care of lepers by the coexistence of healthy and diseased, but also to cultivate dialog and the exchange of information with the public about leprosy sufferers.
The persecution of Jews during the Black Death consisted of a series of violent mass attacks and massacres. Jewish communities were often blamed for outbreaks of the Black Death in Europe. From 1348-1351, acts of violence were committed in Toulon, Barcelona, Erfurt, Basel, Frankfurt, Strasbourg and elsewhere. The persecutions led to a large migration of Jews to Jagiellonian Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. There are very few Jewish sources on Jewish massacres during the Plague.
The Culion Leper Colony is a former leprosarium located on Culion, an island in the Palawan province of the Philippines. It was established by the U.S. government in order to rid leprosy from the Philippine Islands through the only method known at the time: isolating all existing cases and gradually phasing out the disease from the population. In addition to segregating the disease from the rest of the population, the island was later established in order to offer a better opportunity for people afflicted with leprosy to receive adequate care and modern treatments.
Teresa Gil de Vidaure was the common law wife of King James I of Aragon, but never a queen. Claiming that she was a leper, James left her in order to pursue an incestuous relationship with Berenguela Alfonso. Teresa Gil died in seclusion in a monastery she had founded.
David Nirenberg is a medievalist and intellectual historian. He is the Director and Leon Levy Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. He previously taught at the University of Chicago, where he was Dean of the Divinity School, and Deborah R. and Edgar D. Jannotta Distinguished Service Professor of Medieval History and the Committee on Social Thought, as well as the former Executive Vice Provost of the University, Dean of the Social Sciences Division, and the founding Roman Family Director of the Neubauer Family Collegium for Culture and Society. He is also appointed to the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, the Joyce Z. and Jacob Greenberg Center for Jewish Studies.
The Massacre of 1391, also known as the pogroms of 1391, was a display of antisemitism and violence against Jews in Castile and Aragon. It was one of the Middle Ages' worst antisemitic outbreaks. Jews in the Iberian Peninsula at this time were generally disliked, and violence against them was common even until the 15th century. The year 1391, however, marked a peak of anti-Jewish violence. Facing death, many Jews converted en masse to Christianity from 1391 on.
