1000 was a leap year starting on Monday.

Speculation that the world will end in the year 1000 is confined to a few uneasy French monks.Cantor, 1993 Europe in 1050 p 235. Ordinary clerks use regnal years, i.e. the fourth year of the reign of Robert II (the Pious) of France. The use of the modern "anno domini" system of dating is confined to the Venerable Bede and other chroniclers of universal history.

Western Europe remains a backwater compared to the Byzantine Empire, with was what remained of the classical civilization, the Islamic civilization, with its vast network of caravan trade, or China, at this time the world's most populous and magnificent empire under the Song dynasty. Constantinople has a population of about 300,000, but Rome has a mere 35,000 and Paris 20,000. In contrast, Islam has over a dozen major cities stretching from Cordoba, Spain, at this time the world's largest city with 450,000 inhabitants, to central Asia. The Vikings have a trade network in northern Europe, including a route connecting the Baltic to Constantinople through Russia. But it is modest affair compared to the caravan routes that connect the great Islamic cities of Cordoba, Alexandria, Cairo, Baghdad, Basra, and Mecca.

With nearly the entire nation freshly ravaged by the Vikings, England is in a desperate state. Worse is on the way. The long-suffering English will respond with a massacre of Danish settlers in 1002, leading to a round of reprisals and finally to Danish rule (1013). But Christianization is making rapid progress and will prove itself the long-term solution to the problem of barbarian raiding. Scandinavia is recently Christianized and the kingdoms of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark established. The Principality of Russia, with its capital in Kiev, was recently converted to Orthodox Christianity. Iceland and Hungary were both declared Christian about AD 1000.

In Europe, marriage is now established among the nobility.The proscribed degree was the seventh degree of consanguinity, which made virtually all marriages annullable by application to the pope. North of Italy, where masonry construction was never extinguished, stone construction was replacing timber in important structures. Deforestation of the densely wooded continent was under way. The tenth century marked a return of urban life, with the Italian cities doubling in population. London, abandoned for many centuries, was by 1000 once again England's main economic center. By 1000, Bruges and Ghent are holding regular trade fairs behind castle walls, a tentative return of economic life to western Europe.

If the balance sheet for Europe is decidedly mixed, it can at least find solace in the collapse of Islam, an imposing and unite rival only a century before. Unity is hobbled by the divisions between of Shiite vs. Sunni and Arab vs Persian vs Turk. There are three caliphs, an Umayyid caliph in Spain, an Abbasid caliph in Baghdad, and a Shiite (Fatimid) caliph in Egypt. The population of Baghdad, the Abbasid capital, has shrunk to 125,000 (compared to 900,000 in 900).City populations from Four Thousand Years of Urban Growth: An Historical Census (1987, Edwin Mellon Press) by Tertius Chandler

In the culture of Europe, several features surface after 1000, first in the Low Countries and Northern Italy and later elsewhere, that mark the end of the Early Middle Ages: the rise of the medieval communes and the reawakening of city life in general and the appearance of the burgher class, spurred by the revival of long-distance trade that reconnected Europe with the Mediterranean world, the founding of the first universities and the rediscovery of Roman law, and the beginnings of vernacular literature.

In 1000, the papacy is firmly under the control of German Emperor Otto III, or "emperor of the world" as he styles himself. But the church is about to embark on a series of reforms that would enhance its independence and prestige: the Cluniac movement, the building of the first great Transalpine stone cathedrals and the collation of the mass of accumulated decretals into a formulated canon law.

Events

• World Population 300 million.
• Gunpowder invented in China.
• Scandinavia, Iceland and Hungary Christianized.
• Stephen I becomes King of Hungary.
• Sancho III of Navarre becomes King of Aragon, Navarre.
• Leif Ericson lands in North America, calling it Vinland.
• Sweyn I establishes Danish control over part of Norway.
• Dhaka, Bangladesh, is founded.
• Persian scientist Avicenna hypothesized two causes of mountains: "Either they are the effects of upheavals of the crust of the earth, or they are the effect of water, which, cutting itself a new route, has denuded the valleys." He also published Al-Quanun, or The Canon of Medicine, where he held that medicines were to be known either by experiment or by reasoning.
• The Diocese of Kolobrzeg is founded.
• Emperor Otto III makes pilgrimage from Rome to Aachen and Gniezno (Gnesen), stopping at Regensburg, Meissen, Magdeburg, and Gniezno. Congress of Gniezno (with Boleslaw I Chrobry) was part of pilgrimage. In Rome, he builds the basilica of San Bartolomeo all'Isola, to host the relics of St. Bartholomew.
• The Hutu arrive in present-day Rwanda and Burundi, soon outnumbering the native Twa.
• Château de Goulaine vineyard founded in France.
• Fonderia Pontificia Marinelli bell foundry founded in Italy.
• The archdiocese in Gniezno is founded; the first archibishop is Gaudentius, from Slavník's dynasty

Births

• Adalbert, Duke of Lorraine (d. 1048)
• Qawam al-Daula, ruler of Kerman (d. 1028)

Deaths

• September 9 - Olaf I of Norway, killed at the Battle of Svold (b. 969)
• Al-Khujandi, Persian astronomer
• Elfrida, second wife of Edgar of England
• Kuhi, Persian mathematician and astronomer
• Garcia IV of Pamplona
• Tlilcoatzin, Toltec ruler (approximate date)
• David III of Tao, murdered by his nobles

See also

• Millenarianism
• List of state leaders in 1000
• 1000 A.D. Game Page: ^*

Further reading

• Robert Lacey and Danny Danziger The Year 1000: What Life Was Like at the Turn of the First Millennium (1999) ISBN 0316558400

References