Five medieval dates
The Viking Age, the crowning of Charlemagne, the First Crusade, the Hundred Years' War, and the Maid of Orléans.
5 questions. Pick an answer to see the explanation. Share your result at the end.
What dates conventionally mark the start and end of the Viking Age?
The conventional start is the Viking raid on the Lindisfarne monastery on the Northumbrian coast in June 793 AD. The conventional end is the Battle of Stamford Bridge on 25 September 1066, at which the Anglo-Saxon king Harold Godwinson defeated the Norwegian invader Harald Hardrada — three weeks before Harold himself was killed at Hastings.
Who crowned Charlemagne Emperor of the Romans, and when?
Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne *Imperator Romanorum* in St Peter's Basilica in Rome on Christmas Day, 800. The act was politically contested — the existing Roman Empire, ruled from Constantinople, did not recognise it — and established the principle that Western Christian Europe could have its own emperor. The Holy Roman Empire, which dated itself from this coronation, lasted until Napoleon dissolved it in 1806.
Who called the First Crusade, and when?
Pope Urban II preached the First Crusade at the Council of Clermont on 27 November 1095, offering a plenary indulgence to knights who would travel east to recover the Holy Land. The expedition reached Jerusalem and captured it on 15 July 1099. Richard the Lionheart led the Third Crusade (1189–1192); Alexios I Komnenos's request for aid against the Seljuks was the immediate trigger but he did not call the Crusade himself; Francis of Assisi joined the Fifth Crusade as a peace envoy.
How long did the Hundred Years' War actually last?
The conventional dates are 1337 (Edward III's claim to the French throne) to 1453 (the French recovery of Bordeaux). That's 116 years, with multiple long periods of de facto truce. The label *Guerre de Cent Ans* is a 19th-century French historiographical convenience for what contemporaries experienced as a series of distinct wars.
When and how was Joan of Arc executed?
Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in Rouen on 30 May 1431, aged 19, after a heresy trial conducted by an English-aligned French ecclesiastical court. She had been captured by the Burgundians a year earlier and sold to the English. The verdict was overturned by a Vatican retrial in 1456, and she was canonised as a saint in 1920.