All the evil that afflicts mankind comes from the North.
Pope Innocent III, reflecting on the invasion of Italy by Holy Roman Emperor Otto IV.
In the year
AD 1210...
- The Albigensian Crusade rages in southern France. The towns of Bram, Minerve, and Terme fall to the Crusade after lengthy sieges.
- Pope Innocent III gives his approval to Saint Francis of Assisi to establish the Order of Friars Minor, better known as the Franciscan Order of Catholic monks.
- Mongol warlord Genghis Khan begins his assault on the Jurchin Empire in northern China.
- Breaking his promise to Pope Innocent III, Holy Roman Emperor Otto IV invades Sicily, whereupon Innocent promptly excommunicates him from the Church. Undeterred, Otto advances into southern Italy.
- King John of England undertakes a second expedition to shore up his authority in Ireland, accompanied by a massive force of 7,000 men. His primary goal of humbling the overly assertive barons William de Braose and Hugh de Lacy is successful, and despite the attempt by William's wife to bribe John with a bull and 400 cows, de Braose and de Lacy are forced to flee to France.
- Penniless minor French noble John of Brienne becomes king of the crusader state of Jerusalem when his friend King Philip II of France arranges for him to marry the queen of Jerusalem, Marie of Montferrat.
- The mighty Queen Tamar of Georgia invades and plunders northern Persia.
- German poet Gottfried Von Strassburg writes his epic poem Tristan und Isolde about this time, but dies before completing it.
- Indian king Ganapati, ruler of the Kakatiya kingdom in what is now Andhra Pradesh, frees his realm from the oppressive yoke of the Velanati Cholas.
- Welsh king of Gwynedd Llywelyn the Great declares himself the first Prince of Wales.
- A certain man named Ralph betrays the hedonistic Amalrician heresy to the Bishop of Paris, causing nine Amalricians to be burned at the stake and leading the Pope to ban works of Aristotle often quoted by the heretics.
- The River Tay floods in Scotland, obliterating the town of Perth.
- The Crosier Fathers and Brothers, a Roman Catholic religious order, is founded in Belgium.
- The Didot Perceval, an Arthurian romance in Old French, is completed about this time.
- Theodor Shkodrani writes the first book in Albanian by adapting Roman letters to the Albanian vernacular.
- Suspicious of the growing popularity of miracle plays, Pope Innocent III issues a papal edict forbidding clergy from acting on a public stage.
- Dunbrody Abbey, one of the most important Cistercian outposts in Ireland, is founded in what is now County Wexford.
These people were born in 1210:
These people died in 1210:
1209 - 1210 - 1211
13th century