1253

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Year 1253 (MCCLIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.

Events

By place

Europe

• July – William II, Count of Holland defeats the Flemish army at Westkapelle.
• July 6 – Mindaugas is crowned as the only King of Lithuania.
• A series of naval wars begins between the Italian city-states of Genoa and Venice, which will continue sporadically until 1371.
• King Henry III of England meets with English nobles and church leaders to reaffirm the validity of the Magna Carta.
• Pope Innocent IV returns to Rome, having left 9 years earlier in 1244 to depose Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, and being unable to return until after Frederick's death, due to the agitation throughout Europe caused by that action.
• Having rebuffed the armed forces of Conrad IV of Germany, Pope Innocent IV offers Sicily to Edmund, son of King Henry III of England.
• Halych–Volynia becomes a vassal state to the expanding Mongol Empire.
• Matthew Paris writes Historia Anglorum, a work on English history.
• The Basilica of San Francesco, the earliest important structure in the Italian Gothic style of architecture, is completed in Assisi, Italy.
• Sligo Abbey is built in Sligo, Ireland.
• The Domus Conversorum, a building and institution in London for Jews who had converted to Christianity, is established by King Henry III of England.

Asia

• April 28 – Nichiren, a Japanese Buddhist monk, declares his intent to preach the Lotus Sutra and Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō as the true Buddhism, thus founding Nichiren Buddhism.
• May – King Louis IX of France dispatches William of Rubruck from Constantinople on a missionary journey to convert the Tatars of central and eastern Asia. Later that year, William records the first meeting between European Christians and Buddhists.
• The Mongol Empire launches attacks on the Muslim cities of Baghdad and Cairo.
• The Mongol Empire destroys the Dali Kingdom in modern Yunnan and incorporates the region into their empire.
• Kublai Khan introduces the baisha xiyue song and dance suite to the music of Yunnan.
• The Chinese era Baoyou begins in the Southern Song dynasty of China.
• The Mongols defeat the Thai confederacy.

Births

• March 20 – Magadu, renamed Wareru, founder of Ramanya Kingdom, renamed Hanthawady Kingdom of Pegu (b. a commoner; d. on a Saturday in January 1307)
• October 17 – Saint Ivo of Kermartin, French canon lawyer
• probable
  • John I, Duke of Brabant (d. 1294)
  • Hugh II of Cyprus (d. 1267)

Deaths

• January 18 – King Henry I of Cyprus (b. 1217)
• January 19 – Dōgen, Japanese founder of the Soto school of Zen Buddhism
• April 3 – Saint Richard of Chichester
• June 24 – Amadeus IV, Count of Savoy (b. 1197)
• July 8 – Theobald I of Navarre (b. 1201)
• August 11 – Clare of Assisi, Italian follower of Francis of Assisi (b. 1194)
• September 23 – Wenceslaus I of Bohemia
• October 9 – Robert Grosseteste, English statesman and theologian

References