Plague arrives at Messina, Sicily, on merchant ships and spreads across Europe, killing roughly a third of its population.
Date given in the Julian calendar.
Edward III's English army, relying on longbowmen, defeats a much larger French army in northern France.
A series of conflicts between England and France over the French throne ends with England losing nearly all its continental lands.
The poet Dante, author of the Divine Comedy, dies in exile at Ravenna; his work helped shape literary Italian.
Dante Alighieri completes the Divine Comedy, a masterpiece of Italian and medieval European literature.
Rival claimants to the papacy in Rome and Avignon divide the Catholic Church until the Council of Constance ends the schism.
Successive crop failures caused by bad weather bring mass famine to northern Europe, killing a significant share of the population.