1256

Year 1256 (MCCLVI) was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.

Millennium:	2nd millennium
Centuries:	12th century – 13th century – 14th century
Decades:	1220s  1230s  1240s  – 1250s –  1260s  1270s  1280s
Years:	1253 1254 1255 – 1256 – 1257 1258 1259

Events

Europe

• May 4 – Pope Alexander IV issues a papal bull Licet ecclesiae catholicae constituting the Augustinian monastic order at Lecceto Monastery.
• The city of Lviv, in present-day Ukraine, is founded by Danylo King of Rus.
• Theodore II Lascaris, Byzantine Emperor (in exile in the Empire of Nicaea), successfully concludes a military campaign started a year earlier to recover Thrace from the Bulgarians.

Abingdon School is founded. Roger Bacon becomes a Franciscan Friar.

Asia

• October – Mongol commander Baiju (operating under Hulagu Khan's command) leads his forces in a victory over Kay Ka'us II of the Sultanate of Rüm, thereby capturing Anatolia.
• December 15 – Hulagu Khan captures and destroys the Hashshashin stronghold at Alamut in present-day Iran.
• Hulagu Khan establishes the Ilkhanate dynasty of Persia, which will become one of four main divisions of the Mongol Empire.
• The Japanese Kenchō era ends, and the Kōgen era begins.

Births

• January 6 – Gertrude the Great, German mystic
• Robert, Count of Clermont, French founder of the House of Bourbon (died 1317)

• Ibn al-Banna, Arab Mathematician (died 1321)

Deaths

• January 28 – William II, Count of Holland, King of Germany
• June 13 – Tankei, Japanese sculptor (born 1173)
• September 1 – Kujo Yoritsune, Japanese shogun (born 1218)
• October 14 – Kujo Yoritsugu, Japanese shogun (born 1239)
• William of Kilkenny, Lord Chancellor of England
• Johannes de Sacrobosco, English scholar