Political Events

Norway's Magnus VI (the Lawmender) dies at Bergen May 9 at age 41 after a 17-year reign in which he has transformed the country's legal system with a code of laws that will remain in effect for more than 400 years. He is succeeded by his eldest son, who will reign until 1299 as Erik II Magnusson.

Commerce

Flemish textile workers rebel against their exploiters.

Marco Polo visits Hangzhou and finds it an eastern Venice, a seaside city of 900,000 that Marco will call "beyond dispute the greatest city which may be found in the world, where so many pleasures may be found that one fancies himself in Paradise." Having come from Europe's most sophisticated city, Marco is awed by the countless ships bringing spices from the Indies and embarking with silks for the Levant.

The merchants of Hangzhou use paper money, unknown in Europe.

Transportation

China's 1,100-mile Grand Canal extends north from Hangzhou to Khanbelig (later Beijing [Peking]; see 605). When it becomes fully navigable in the next century, it will unify the country, and by the middle of the 15th century the canal will have some 12,000 boats plying its brackish waters (the journey by water from one end to the other will take 2 months, as compared to 6 months or more by land).

Science

Botanist-chemist-alchemist-philosopher Albertus Magnus (Albert, count von Bollstädt) dies among his fellow monks at Cologne November 15 at age 73, having introduced Aristotelian natural philosophy to northern Europe. He has traced the continent's chief mountain ranges, given a good physical description of the Earth (and demonstrated its spherical shape), written 36 volumes on the natural sciences, and made himself an authority on astronomy, biology, chemistry, mineralogy, and physics (he will be beatified in 1622).

Medicine

The Council of Boulogne decrees that when a mother dies in childbirth her mouth shall be held open so that the baby will not suffocate before an attempt is made to deliver it by cesarean section. The term cesarean, or caesarean, comes from the Latin a caeso matris utero, meaning to cut the mother's womb. Contrary to popular belief, Julius Caesar was delivered vaginally when he was born in 100 B.C.; cesarean section was used then only to take a baby from the body of a dead or dying mother, and Caesar's mother lived long after his birth. Given the choice between the survival of the mother or the baby, ancient medical practitioners traditionally chose the mother, killing the fetus inside the mother by fracturing its skull or by craniotomy—opening up the infant's skull and removing its brain. The body was then dismembered and removed. The Roman Catholic church prohibits abortion, dismemberment, or craniotomy intended to save the life of the mother (see 1916).

Religion

Pope Nicholas III dies at Soriano nel Cimino, near Viterbo, August 22 at age 55 (approximate) after a 2½-year reign (see 1281).

Literature

Poetry: Oeuvres by the French trouvère Rutebeuf, 50, is a collection of poems barbed with satire.

Marine Resources

Marco Polo will describe the enormous piles of fresh fish available in Hangzhou's markets; conchs, crabs, scallops, sea snails, shark fins, and shrimp are all sold in the marketplace.

Agriculture

Marco Polo will describe the endless-chain foot-powered water pump used to irrigate Chinese farmland. This and other inventions are revolutionizing Chinese agriculture.

Food And Drink

Marco Polo will write that the city of Hangzhou has 10 main open spaces plus many smaller ones (Chinese writings will say 414) where foodstuffs and other goods are sold. On the 3 or 4 days each week when a square is open for business some 30,000 to 40,000 people will come to buy such foods as "roebuck, francolins [partridges], quails, fowls, capons, and so many ducks and geese that more could not be told; for they rear so many of them that [West] Lake (which borders the city), that for one Venetian groat may be had a pair of geese and two pair of ducks." He will also mention red deer, fallow deer, hares, and rabbits.

Marco Polo will describe vegetables and fruits, including giant white pears "which weigh 10 pounds apiece." Oranges and mandarin oranges are sold in a special area behind the market street, and there are also apricots from Sichuan, grapes, and other fruit. The grain market is outside the north gate, there are two markets for pork, markets for vegetables, markets for meat other than pork (including beef, horse, donkey, venison, rabbit, and fowl), and markets for fish (fresh and preserved), and crabs.

The Chinese at Hangzhou enjoy leafy and green vegetables and a great variety of buns—steamed, deep-fried, and often filled—that are sold by street vendors and served at restaurants. Honeyed fruit and dried bananas are also sold.

Kublai Khan calls in Egyptian experts to improve Chinese techniques of refining sugar (see 440). A refined white sugar known as "sugar frost" has been made in Sichuan since late in the Tang dynasty, but the Egyptians have acquired a reputation for making exceptionally white sugar.

Aragon's Pedro III, now 44, declares that his court must always include an apothecary, whose chief job will be to make candied fruits, nuts, and seeds called "comfits."

Restaurants

Hangzhou has restaurants that specialize in particular foods—blood soup, perhaps, or dishes made of heart, kidney, and lungs—and particular cooking styles. There are noodle shops (some serving noodles with vegetables or with meat), fish houses, restaurants serving vegetarian "temple" food prepared in the style of Buddhist temples, places specializing in iced foods. The restaurants have menus, and waiters carry orders in their heads, repeating them when they get to the kitchen and remembering who ordered what with absolute precision (mistakes are severely punished). Even inns and wayside teahouses now have large rectangular tables with benches on which patrons sit to eat. China has had restaurants since the 12th century, some of them selling deep-fried foods (also sold by street vendors, who appear at dawn and work until late at night, hawking food and drink of all kinds), but cooking is, with a few exceptions, considered an occupation suitable only for members of the lower classes (Confucius counseled his followers to avoid the kitchen).

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