Henry III accepts severe curtailment of his powers in the Provisions of Oxford, but then asks the pope to absolve him from his oath

Nicola Pisano completes a pulpit for Pisa, borrowing details from Roman sarcophagi - an early example of a new interest in the classical past

A new form of poetry is written in northern Italy, described later by Dante as a sweet new style - the dolce stil nuovo

The Bohemian prince Otakar II, ruler also of Austria, extends his territories after defeating the Hungarians at Kressenbrunn

The Norwegian king, Haakon IV, annexes Iceland as his personal fief, bringing to an end the commonwealth established in AD 930

Pope Urban IV offers Sicily to a French prince, Charles of Anjou, who marches south in 1266 to fight for the kingdom

Prince Edward, escaping from captivity, defeats and kills Simon de Montfort at Evesham

Thomas Aquinas begins the outstanding work of medieval scholasticism, his Summa Theologiae

In a treaty agreed at Shrewsbury, the English king Henry III acknowledges Llewellyn ap Gruffydd as the prince of Wales

The first mention of a lens occurs in a manuscript by Roger Bacon, to be soon followed by the invention of spectacles

Novgorod asserts its independence, electing its own city magistrate to take over the role of the local Russian prince

Marco Polo, aged seventeen, sets off from Venice on his journey to the east

Edward I is in Sicily when he becomes king of England, on the death of his father, Henry III

The period without a German king, known as the Great Interregnum, ends with the election of a Habsburg prince, Rudolf I

Dante, aged nine, is overwhelmed by the beauty of Beatrice - a child a year younger than himself who later becomes his poetic inspiration

At Dürnkrut Rudolf I defeats and kills Otakar II, his rival for Austria - thus bringing the Austrian territories into the Habsburg domain

An incident in a church service sparks the uprising known as the Sicilian Vespers, in which 2000 French are killed overnight in Sicily

An uprising by Llewellyn ap Gruffydd, the prince of Wales, ends with his own death and the subjugation of Wales by the king of England, Edward I

Edward I begins a series of powerful castles - Harlech, Caernarfon and Conwy in this year alone - to subdue the Welsh

The classical work of the Kabbalah, the Zohar, is almost certainly the work of the Spanish Kabbalist Moses de Leon

The Jews in England are driven out of the country, soon to be followed by those in France

The Swiss forest districts of Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden sign an Everlasting League (in the Rütli meadow) to resist Habsburg domination

The first open-air democratic assembly, later characteristic of the Swiss cantons, is held in Schwyz

The parliament summoned by Edward I in Westminster Hall is later seen as a 'model' for the breadth of its representation

Marco Polo is back in Venice after an absence of 25 years in the east