1217 – Alexander Neckam, English scholar and theologian, writes De naturis rerum ("On the Nature of Things"), a scientific encyclopedia.[5]
1220 – A new shrine built at Canterbury Cathedral in England to house the remains of St Thomas Becket quickly becomes one of Europe's major places of pilgrimage,[6] and the destination of the fictional pilgrims in Geoffrey Chaucer's set of narrative poems The Canterbury Tales, written about 170 years later.[7]
1226: By August – The biographical poem L'histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal, commissioned to commemorate William Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke (died 1219), a rare example at this time of a life of a lay person, is completed, probably by a Tourangeau layman called John in the southern Welsh Marches.[8]
Error creating thumbnail: Dante Alighieri was one of the most influential writers of the 13th century1240 – Albert of Stade joins the Franciscan order and begins his chronicle.[9]
1251 – The carving is completed of the Tripitaka Koreana, a collection of Buddhistscriptures recorded on some 81,000 wooden blocks, thought to have been started in 1236.[11]
1258: February 13 – The House of Wisdom in Baghdad is destroyed by forces of the Mongol Empire after the Siege of Baghdad. The waters of the Tigris are said to have run black with ink from the huge quantities of books flung into it, and red from the blood of the philosophers and scientists killed.
1276 – Merton College, Oxford, is first recorded as having a collection of books, making its Library the world's oldest in continuous daily use.[13] During the first century of its existence the books are probably kept in a chest.
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