1401

• Mongol warlord Timur (Tamerlane) continues his conquests, capturing Damascus and razing Baghdad.
• English King Henry IV passes a law, De heretico comburendo ("On the burning of heretics"), which allows the Catholic Church to burn those it deems heretics at the stake without having to seek approval from the King.
• In the Union of Vilnius and Radom, Polish king Jogaila grants Grand Duke Vytautas of Lithuania greater autonomy in exchange for a promise that upon his death the title of Grand Duke would pass to the Polish king (or vice versa).
• Owain Glyndwr's Welsh Revolt begins to gather steam as disgruntled nobles flock to his banner. Conwy Castle briefly falls to the Tudor family (allies of Owain) thanks to a Trojan Horse-like trick involving a carpenter letting everyone in while the guards were at Good Friday mass, and Owain defeats forces loyal to Henry IV at the Battle of Pumlumon Mountain later that summer.
• Japanese shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu sends an embassy to China, reestablishing diplomatic links as a tributary state of the Ming Dynasty.
• Following several abortive attempts at normalizing diplomatic relations, Ming China finally recognizes the new Joseon Dynasty in Korea and accepts it as a tributary vassal state.
• Bohemian poet Johannes von Tepl writes his most famous work Death and the Ploughman (Der Ackermann und der Tod), a prose poem of some 34 chapters presented as a dialogue between Death and a ploughman.

These people were born in 1401:

• German priest and philosopher Nicholas of Cusa.
• Italian painter Masaccio.
• Catherine of Valois, wife of English king Henry V, mother of Henry VI, and grandmother of Henry VII.
• Japanese emperor Shōkō.

These people died in 1401:

• English priest William Sawtrey, burned at the stake for preaching Lollardy.
• German pirate Klaus Störtebeker.
• Scottish queen Anabella Drummond, wife of King Robert III.

1399 - 1401 - 1402

15th century

How they were made