A laurel wreath is placed on the brow of Petrarch in Rome, in a renewal of interest in the classical world

The bridge now known as Ponte Vecchio is constructed in Florence (replacing an older old bridge)

The great Byzantine altarpiece of St Mark's, the Pala d'Oro, is adjusted to take its present form

Edward III of England, defaulting on his massive debts, drives the Florentine banking families of Bardi and Peruzzi into bankruptcy

Charles IV, king of Bohemia, German king and Holy Roman emperor, makes Prague a glittering centre of learning and architecture

The more mobile English force, of longbows and infantry, defeats at Crécy the unwieldy crossbows and heavy cavalry of the French

Edward III establishes a new kind of knighthood with the Order of the Garter, conferred purely as an honour

The English siege of Calais ends when six burghers of the town, with ropes around their necks, offer their lives to save their fellow citizens

Cola di Rienzo, appointed tribune of the people, enjoys a few months of dictatorial powers in Rome before the citizens tire of him

Boccaccio begins his Decameron, supposedly the stories told by young Florentine men and women sheltering from the Black Death

William Tell, a figure of legend, epitomizes the struggle of the Swiss farmers against their feudal overlords, the Habsburgs

Armies of mercenaries, led by condottieri, conduct Italian warfare at an often extortionate rate

Boccaccio, visiting Petrarch in Florence, is inspired to devote himself to the pursuit of classical studies

Gallipoli is taken by the Ottoman Turks, giving them their first foothold in Europe

Charles IV establishes a permanent group of seven electors - four hereditary German rulers and the archbishops of Mainz, Cologne and Trier

The battle of Poitiers ends, on the third day, with victory for the English and the capture of the French king, John II

After four years of captivity in Bordeaux and London, the French king John II is released for a promised ransom of 3 million gold crowns

A great clock is completed in Padua, regulated mechanically by foliot and escapement

A narrator who calls himself Will, and whose name may be Langland, begins the epic poem of Piers Plowman

One of four new yeomen of the chamber in Edward III's household is Geoffrey Chaucer

The marriage of the duke of Burgundy to the heiress of Flanders lays the foundation for the great territorial expansion of Burgundy

On the death of his uncle, David II, Robert Stewart becomes king of Scotland as Robert II

The courtly poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight tells of a mysterious visitor to the round table of King Arthur

John Wycliffe, writing mainly in Oxford, is critical of the contemporary church and can find no basis for the pope's authority

The papal curia returns to Rome in what would seem a conclusive move if there were not, two years later, two popes - one of them elected back in Avignon