Here’s our next instalment of things that happened in ..24 years of yore.

Notable Events in 1324

8 January. Death of Marco Polo (below), Italian merchant and explorer (b.1254)

5 March. Birth of David II, King of Scotland (d.1371)

23 March. Pope John XXII excommunicates Ludwig the Bavarian, King of the Germans, for not seeking papal approval during his conflict against his rival Frederick the Fair. Ludwig, in turn, declares the Pope a heretic, because of John’s opposition to the view of Christ’s absolute poverty held by some Franciscans.

3 November. At Kilkenny in Ireland, Petronilla de Meath, the maidservant of Dame Alice Kyteler, becomes the first person in the British Isles to be burned at the stake as a witch. Dame Alice was able to escape and avoid capture.

Unknown Date. Marsilius of Padua writes Defensor pacis (The Defender of Peace), a theological treatise arguing against the power of the clergy and in favour of a secular state.

Unknown Date. William of Ockham, English Franciscan friar and philosopher, is summoned by John XXII to the papal court at Avignon and imprisoned.