Important Dates in Medieval History

Early Middle Ages: 500 - 1000 (or 430/476 - 955/1000)

High Middle Ages: 1000 - 1300 (or 955/1000 - 1321/1341)

Late Middle Ages: 1300 - 1500 (or 1321/1341 - 1450/1453/1492)

• 430: death of Augustine of Hippo
• 476: fall of last Western Roman emperor, Romulus Augustulus, to Odoacer
• 711: start of Muslim conquest of Iberian Peninsula
• 800: Charlemagne crowned emperor on Christmas Day
• 955: Battle of Lechfeld, where Otto I defeated the Hungarians
• 1054: start of Great Schism of the church
• 1066: Battle of Hastings, where William the Conqueror conquered England
• 1096: start of First Crusade
• 1215: signing of the Magna Carta
• 1321: death of Dante
• 1341: Petrarch crowned poet laureate of Rome, the first since antiquity
• 1348: The Black Death strikes Europe
• 1450: Gutenberg invents the printing press
• 1453: fall of Constantinople to the Turks, end of the Byzantine Empire
• 1492: final Christian victory over the Muslims in Spain, explusion of Spanish Jews, first voyage of Christopher Columbus